Isle movie to debut
at Sundance festival"The Land Has Eyes" is the event's
first film by someone from Fiji
Hawaii-based Te Maka Productions will have the world premiere of its first feature film, "The Land Has Eyes," in January at the Sundance Film Festival, one of the movie industry's most prestigious events.
The film was written and directed by Hawaii resident Vilsoni Hereniko, a playwright and professor at the Center for Pacific Island Studies at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
The film will be featured in the Native Forum section at the Sundance festival, which was founded by Robert Redford. The event will be held Jan. 15 to 25, in Park City, Utah.
"The Land Has Eyes" is a 90-minute drama about Viki (Sapeta Taito), a South Pacific young woman who redeems her family's name by exposing the secrets of her island's most powerful people.
Hereniko grew up on Rotuma, Fiji, a small island with a population of 2,500.
The film was produced by Hereniko's wife, Jeannette Paulson Hereniko, founder/director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, and movie executive Corey Tong.
"The Land Has Eyes" is the first feature film by an indigenous filmmaker from Fiji, according to Sundance. It has received support from Pacific Islanders in Communications, a national nonprofit media organization established primarily to increase national public broadcast programming by and about indigenous Pacific Islanders.