Lisa Taouma: bringing Pasifika flavour to television...

Interview – 2015

Producer/director Lisa Taouma cut her teeth as a reporter on long-running Pacific magazine show Tagata Pasifika. She is the driving force behind popular PI youth show Fresh, and has made a number of documentaries on Samoan culture. Taouma went on to launch online venture The Coconet.

In this ScreenTalk interview, Taouma talks about:

How her parents' interracial relationship fed into her teleplay Tala Pasifika - Brown Sugar
Tala Pasifika - Talk of the Town being inspired by the legendary Cindy of Samoa
How persistence got her a job as a reporter on Tagata Pasifika
Feeling lucky to have produced coverage of Polyfest
Seeing Oscar Kightley-presented documentary Ōtara Market win a prime time slot
Exploring her fascination with tattooing in Maesina Samoa: Stories of the Malu
The satisfaction of seeing her show Fresh connect with its audience
The joy of creating, and controlling, the online hit that is The Coconet

This video was first uploaded on 7 July 2015, and is available under this Creative Commons licence. This licence is limited to use of ScreenTalk interview footage only and does not apply to any video content and photographs from films, television, music videos, web series and commercials used in the interview.

Interview, Camera and Editing – Andrew Whiteside

It was so amazing back then. Because it was off-peak telly and it was speaking to a specific community, in a lot of ways we had tonnes of freedom . . . we were in a unique position of being able to speak directly to an audience.
– Lisa Taouma on Pasifika magazine show Tagata Pasifikia

Lisa's Full Profile