The New Oceania

Television (Full Length) – 2005

Shirley Horrocks’ documentary profiles the life, work, and influence of pioneering Pacific Island writer Albert Wendt. His groundbreaking 1973 novel, Sons for the Return Home, was the first English-language novel published by a Samoan. The film follows Wendt across the Pacific, tracing his upbringing in Samoa, his education in New Zealand, and work as a writer and teacher. It also discusses the contemporary explosion of Pacific arts — a movement Wendt has helped shape and inspire. "I belong to Oceania — or, at least, I am rooted in a fertile part of it and it nourishes my spirit, helps to define me, and feeds my imagination."

I was homesick for a whole year in New Zealand. I was in the middle of Taranaki in this town called New Plymouth. I immediately fell in love with the mountain. Somehow I could identify with Mt Taranaki and it’s remained with me all my life as my mountain. Symbolically I’m closer to it than even the mountains here [in Samoa], except of course the lava fields in Sava’i
– Wendt reflects on moving from Samoa to boarding school in New Plymouth