Tinā asserts Sāmoa's strength

Review: more than a movie Tinā says we can do better

Tinā, a modest-budget Sāmoan-Aotearoa New Zealand movie, is setting records on release,  garnering largely positive reviews, and leaving a warm glow across the Pacific.

While any decent reviewer should question the film’s production (and I will further on), my interest rests in the way in which New Zealand’s 1914 conquest and colonisation of Deutsch-Sāmoa has, overtime, turned into the Sāmoanisation of Aotearoa. White New Zealand went to get Sāmoa; Sāmoa has become an intrinsic part of Aotearoa. 

Tinā - Mareta Percival (Anapela Polataivao) - makes it plain how far it's all come.

Writer-director Miki Magasiva planted two striking totems in Tinā, both introduced early and resonating throughout the film. Mareta’s only daughter is at some kind of musical try out and speaks to her mother on the phone: ‘I am at the CTV Building now.’ No Aotearoa audience needed further explanation; it evokes a shared national grief. The second was an 'īe tōga, or fine mat, whose cultural significance Sāmoans would understand, but in this film, its role was particularly profound, right through to the emotional finale.