title: The Dream

type: Poster

status: Released

overview: Visually evocative and not only because of the Tahitian setting, this engaging story by femme director Dominique Arnaud starts off with a man looking through the bars of his prison cell out at the landscape beyond. His reverie ends when he suddenly subdues the guard who has come to bring him his meal and in a flash, he is out and free. Various adventures await him within the town and with its people but in the end, he heads off into the jungle. He spends some time building a house and seems content to prefer the company of his radio and the animals around him to the townspeople. Then one day his sharp ears pick up a sound that could threaten his new-found life.

title: The Dream

job: Director

department: Directing

type: Crew

job: Writer

department: Writing

original_title: Moemoea

original_language: ty


title: Ariipaea Vahine

type: Backdrop

overview: “Ariipaea-Vahine” is originally a poem by Henri Hiro. This poem will become a play performed several times at the Grand Théâtre and in Moorea by the Pupu Arioi. In 1978, the Matarau cinema unit was created at the Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture. The first film in this department will be an adaptation of the play.  In his book "Autonomous Tahiti", Philippe Mazelier defines the piece as follows: "The theme is classic, the parabola transparent: as long as it was faithful to ancestral convictions, Ariipaea passed from the world of men to the world of gods, and Maohi culture was alive. When she converted, the gods stopped speaking to her, and Tahitian culture died. To revive it implies for Henri Hiro to fight Western culture. He calls for a return to basics against the consumer society while the latter, at the same time, is working twice as hard.

title: Ariipaea Vahine

job: Technical Advisor

department: Crew

original_title: Ariipaea Vahine

production_countries: FR PF


title: Henua Enana

overview: They were unveiled to the world through Herman Melville's immortalizing novels, Gauguin's paintings and Jacques Brel's songs. The Marquesas Islands, this archipelago of French Polynesia, still remain hazy in the western world. They are wild lands still scarcely inhabited; they are a land with rough relief; they are a land where men and nature, still primitive and untouched, live side by side. But most of all, the Marquesas Islands are the land of a an exceptional people: men.

title: Henua Enana

job: Editor

department: Editing

job: Cinematography

job: Sound

department: Sound

original_title: Henua Enana


title: Tärava

overview: Filmed between 1980 and 1983, Tärava is considered the founding work of documentary cinema in Tahitian and embodies the link between the Polynesian and his ancestral land. To the rhythm of songs, hïmene tärava, the film takes us to discover our mountains and our valleys, and the story of the birth of the tärava.  Filmed by Henri Hiro, Angelo Oliver and Harris Aunoa, Tärava looks back on the period during which missionaries settled in Polynesia. They never ceased to prohibit traditional songs and dances because they expressed in their eyes the perversions and lust of these pagan peoples. Drums and flutes, the basic instruments of Polynesian music, were thus banned. Only choral singing was permitted.

title: Tärava

original_title: Tärava


title: Te hope'araa no Hina

title: Te hope'araa no Hina

original_title: Te hope'araa no Hina


title: Moemoea

overview: A sound short from Gaston Guilbert's Tahiti Films studio.

title: Moemoea


title: Marae

overview: This historical drama by Henri Hiro brings to life the majestic enthronement of a young king on the sacred marae Arahurahu in Paea, Tahiti. Set entirely in one place and one moment in time, the film immerses the viewer in the intricate rituals of an ancient Polynesian ceremony, portrayed with all its traditional splendor. Over 200 performers—including actors, dancers, musicians, and extras—contribute to this powerful reimagining of the past. The film features choreography by the acclaimed Coco Hotahota and music performed by the group Tereia de Penina.

title: Marae

original_title: Marae