Film: An Island Calling
Where: Royal Ontario Museum Toronto (Hot Docs Film Festival)
When: Thursday 24th April 2008, 7-15pm
Director/Producer: Annie Goldson
Rating: (5/5 Kiwis)

For other show times see Hot Docs Website.
Trailer From Youtube.

Based on the book Deep Beyond the Reef: A True Story of Madness and Murder in the South Pacific, Kiwi director Annie Goldson takes us through the story of Scott Family as well as colonial and post colonial Fiji right up to the coup of 2006.

Narrated by the author, Owen Scott, Annie paints a picture of Owen’s journey from his earliest recollections of family life in the islands, to the brutal murder of his older brother Maurice to his journey back to Fiji to find some answer and some closure to his brother’s (and his partner Greg Scrivener) demise.

The film tells a story of the challenges of being openly gay in an increasingly conservative Christian nation. All this with the backdrop of an increasingly unstable society rocked by ethnic tensions between the native Fijian population and the Asian Indian population.

This ethnic tension, which on three occasions burst into violence and the overthrow of the sitting government, adds to this very intriguing and tightly wound narrative, cleanly articulated by Owen, himself an actor and orator.

The newspaper coverage at the time hinted at a homo-sexual scandal and the Fijian police was none to subtle in their disapproval of their so called “depraved” life style, but the movie clearly paints the prejudices for what they are. Annie and Owen speak to almost all of the effected parties including the murderer’s family, the local gay community, elders, lawyers and prosecutors in a clear and effect way, just as good journalism should.

The film is well crafted, the cinematography simple so as not to distract from the story. The camera paints a picture of a well trodden street in the middle of a pacific island nation, a nation that is still struggling with it’s past and the future beyond the tensions that exist to this day.

“An Island Calling” is a valuable contribution to the understanding of modern Fiji and is a well crafted documentary well worth the effort seeing.

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