Lisa Taouma
Lisa Taouma grew up in the Samoan settlement of Faleasiu. Later she migrated to Dunedin, then Grey Lynn in Auckland.
Taouma got a screen break writing two episodes for Tala Pasifika, a pioneering 1996 series of short dramas. Showcasing emerging Polynesian screen talent, the series screened on TV One’s long-running PI magazine show Tagata Pasifika on Sunday mornings. Brown Sugar followed two young South Auckland musicians with stars in their eyes. Talk of the Town, inspired by the iconic Cindy of Samoa, is about a fa'afafine who has grown up to become a cabaret performer.
For Taouma the series gave her a glimpse of the impact of screen storytelling, of "how ideas and dreams could be translated through words and imagery."
Worn down by her persistance, producer Stephen Stehlin finally gave Taouma a job as a reporter for Tagata Pasifika, where she is now a senior director. She has also produced items on everything from the evolution of Pacific dance (2004's ‘Siva Pasifika’) to wrangling 65-strong crew, multiple stages and drones for multiple editons of Polyfest (the annual cultural contest for Māori and Pacific youth). In 2007 she got to interview Samoan head of state King Malietoa Tanumafili II, just before he died. Taouma rates the footage of "incredible grief and loss of local families" in Samoa following the 2009 tsunami as the most heart-wrenching material she has had to gather.
In 2001 Taouma pushed for Oscar Kightley to present her documentary exploring South Auckland’s iconic Otara Market. Her 2003 experimental film Maesina Samoa: Stories of the Malu looked at the experience of Samoan women who received the traditional tattoo. It screened at Canadian festival imagineNATIVE, as did Fa'afafine In Transit - Nothing to Declare, which examined fa’afafine culture.
Taouma's partner is Naked Samoan and bro’Town and Sione’s Wedding star Mario Gaoa. Under the banner of company Tikilounge Productions, the two created Pasifika youth-focused magazine show Fresh in 2010. After years of pitching the concept for the programme, Taouma felt the pressure of pioneering it on a mainstream network (TV2). "It was the first show we had made from scratch and it HAD to be good."
In a 2010 NZ Herald interview at the time of the show's first series, she commented on the challenges of being a working mother in the screen industry. "It's quite a pressure situation but only for 16 episodes. Our rationale with the intense work stuff is that every year we go away for a month and spend family bonding time. We're going to take May off." Luckily Taouma’s mother runs a childcare centre, and helped out when production deadlines loomed. Taouma says that the show has found its audience by speaking to Pasifika youth in their own language.
"We have to ride the wave while the wave is here. We are on a huge wave, Pacific TV-making has just been born; bro'Town has led the way. They now sell advertising on TV around Pacific TV. So we are at the peak of our careers — and we have to factor the unexpected late-life baby into that!"
In 2013 the Fresh team scored a coup after memorably hijacking a Q&A with Game of Thrones actor Jason Momoa at a fan expo. In late 2014 Tikilounge Productions was named as a ‘preferred applicant’ for Fresh, as TVNZ shifted to outsource the production of its Māori and Pacific Island programming. Taouma is the show's senior director.
In 2014 Taouma branched out into online content with The Coconet, an online portal aiming to connect Kiwi Pacific youth with their heritage and cultures. She says that the website has found "a really hungry audience" because it provides content to an underserviced audience at the touch of a finger.
"We put it together because we felt we weren't being served well on the telly," Taouma told Radio New Zealand. "Networks put you on at such difficult time slots for the community to watch ... when I went online there wasn't one home for Pacific content online, so we created it to be the virtual village if you like ... it's like creating the bones of a universe that the audience helps to fill in, because people upload their own content. You create this awesome dynamic conversation."
Taouma has described Fresh and Coconet as the "loves of my life": "They have both influenced a whole population of Pacific people across the region and people are so passionate about it — kids have lines from the show printed on T-shirts, it's created new catchphrases and people are just so grateful there are shows that speak directly to them as an audience."
After exploring the place of hair for women in Pasifika culture (in documentary Adorn), Taouma turned her eye to the history of tatau (tattoo) with Marks of Mana. The documentary won her another award at Canada's imagineNATIVE fest; it also marked the third time she'd competed against herself in the same category of the NZ Television Awards (Best Pasifika Programme).
Taouma got a Master of Arts at Auckland University with First Class Honours. She has lectured in Pacific Arts, curated exhibitions, and written extensively for scholarly publications on representation of Polynesia in art. In 2002 she devised Pasifika Divas, for the Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, a Pan-Pacific collective of artists that performed and showed work at Queensland Art Gallery.
Profile originally published on 4 June 2015; updated 18 March 2022
Sources include
Lisa Taouma
‘Lisa Taouma: Bringing Pasifika flavour to television’ (Video Interview), NZ On Screen website. Director Andrew Whiteside. Loaded 7 July 2015. Accessed 6 September 2018
The Coconet website. Accessed 18 March 2022
Simon Collins and Martin Johnston, 'Look how we've changed - New Zealand 38 years on' (Interview in second to last section) - The NZ Herald, 27 November 2010
'Lisa Taouma' (broken link) TVNZ website. Accessed 3 June 2015
'Marks of Mana: the first film dedicated to female tattooing in the Pacific' (Interview) Radio New Zealand website. Loaded 14 October 2018. Accessed 18 March 2022