The New Oceania

Television (Full Length) – 2005

Shirley Horrocks' documentary profiles the life, work and influence of pioneering PI writer Albert Wendt (1973's Sons for the Return Home was the first novel published in English by a Samoan). The film accompanies the writer to various locations in the Pacific and addresses his Samoa upbringing, his education in New Zealand and his work as writer and teacher; and discusses the contemporary explosion of Pacific arts. "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