Audio transcription
For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.
John Quackenbush 0:01
February 20, 2015. The Harvard Film Archive screened Moana with Sound. This is the audio recording of the introduction and the discussion that followed. Participating are HFA Programmer David Pendleton and historian Sami van Ingen.
David Pendleton 0:16
Good evening, folks. David Pendleton of the Harvard Film Archive here, to welcome you all to this very special screening, featuring a very special guest. We have a very full program to get through in the next couple of hours, so I'll be very brief. I first of all want to remind you, as always, to please turn off any devices that you have on your person that might make noise, or shed light, and please refrain from illuminating them during the screening.
Our Flaherty retrospective opened a few weeks ago with Nanook of the North. This weekend is kind of a nexus of events. We did, sadly, have to cancel Man of Aran last Sunday. I hope to reschedule that sometime in March. Watch the website. We'll be announcing that shortly. Yesterday, we had a seminar here, cosponsored, or put on by the Celtic Language Department, Celtic Studies, about the rediscovered short that was found here at the Harvard Library, A Night of Storytelling. We've added that to next weekend's Flaherty Shorts program. And we'll show it again when we reschedule Man of Aran.
But tonight and tomorrow night, we have two rarely seen films that Flaherty worked on. Tomorrow night is Elephant Boy, tonight, Moana, or more properly, Moana with Sound. Moana began in the wake of the success of Nanook of the North. It was Robert Flaherty's second film, completed in 1926, and then, as a silent film, and then remade with a soundtrack decades later by Flaherty's daughter, Monica. But here to tell us more about the making of both films, and the making of the version that we're going to see tonight, I'm very pleased to welcome a special guest, Mr. Sami van Ingen, who is a filmmaker in his own right, and a professor of moving image production work, based in Helsinki. And he's also graciously agreed to come tomorrow night, to say a little bit about Elephant Boy, as well. But it's Sami who was responsible for putting together, with Bruce Posner, the restoration that you're about to see. Sami's been making short films for a number of years, as well as installation work, and now film performance, live film, expanded cinema events. His work was featured at Balagan here just a couple of years ago. Some of you may have seen the work then. But here now to talk about Moana with Sound, please welcome Sami van Ingen.
[APPLAUSE]
Sami van Ingen 3:05
Hello. Well, first I'd like to thank David, Haden, and everybody for inviting me over. It's quite exciting for me, as well. This is a product of six years of restoration, and desperation, and adventures, and so on, what we're going to see. The Flaherty films, most of them, except for Nanook, they were all made as a teamwork, not only by Robert Flaherty, but also Frances, his wife, and then his brother David, and many other people as well. So, that's one of the kind of things that we should remember. These are kind of weird, collaborative works, all of them, in some way or the other. And Moana is a particularly interesting film, because it's also the least seen of the big Flaherty films, and also maybe one of those kind of films that has been written about a lot, but very few people have actually seen it, and particularly, have seen it properly. Because a lot of people who write about Moana, have written about Moana, have actually watched the VHS tape or something, and they really haven't seen that much of the image. So hopefully tonight we're going to see something else than a crummy image.
And I have only a few minutes, so I'm trying to be really brief. I could talk for hours about this, but, but I thought of kind of combining three impossibilities around this whole adventure of Moana, and Moana with Sound, and how it's ended up here for us tonight. When Moana was made, it was funded by Hollywood to be the second Nanook. And it was kind of an impossible thing, because when the Flahertys brought the film back to Hollywood, it couldn't be exploited commercially very well, because there was no stars in it, in the sense of Hollywood. It was difficult to have Moana number two, and you know, make a sequel out of it. And, and that was, I think, actually, quite a big reason why, I think, Paramount, or the studio, shelved the film. The other reason, of course, was that there was nudity, or top nudity, I don't know what you call it in this part of the world. And that was a reason why it was actually banned in a lot of places, in Canada particularly, of all places. And so, the film had these kind of weird, weird problems, not because of the film, but because of these kind of other things around it. And the other thing, of course, was that it was long. It was long, and didn't have a story, it didn't have a punchline. The Europeans liked it, their critics liked it and all that, but it didn't have that kind of a commercial, the kind of same thinking that the commercial films had at that time. And so, it was ditched. Then, fifty years later, in the 70s, mid-70s, Monica, who was the youngest daughter of the Flahertys, decided to try to somehow revitalize this film that nobody had more or less seen, but everybody had heard about, and she somehow dug out the print from somewhere. And then her impossibility in this—the number two impossibility—was that she thought that she would go, or that's what she did, she went to the village where the film was shot fifty years earlier, and collaborated with the people in the village, and the cast that had been acting in the original film, with the idea that she would make an authentic soundtrack. Which is an impossibility, of course, because the world had changed, and Samoans had changed, and film had changed, the idea for documentary had developed, and authenticity was different, and so on. But she did, she went there, and she collaborated with the people and Samoans, and listened to them, and did this kind of, there's lots and lots of people involved in her production, and it took years and years and years.
And, finally, in the 80s, she released it. And then comes the third impossibility. She found it impossible to distribute the film because of the ownership was Hollywood, and there was no commercial... There was a lot of critical interest, but there was simply no way to make money out of it, enough for the Paramount to be interested in it. At least that's her view of it. And so, she showed it around, and quite a few places around the world, in kind of film archives and special venues. Never in Samoa though. And then the film, with her, disappeared and got stuck in her house in Vermont, in the hills, and kind of disappeared. Her version as well. So we had no sound Moana, no Moana, nothing much existing. And that was in the 90s. And then she passed away in 2008. And then I ended up going through the house, and found these materials, and this whole kind of quite amazing history of this archive of not only the soundtrack and the film, but also all the stuff that went along with it. Because Monica had interviewed 300 hours of sound tapes of all the people involved in Samoa. And it was like a research project as well, and a really odd, complicated project, with all kind of bits and pieces in it. But then last year, we finally, after lots and lots of impossibilities, we were able to get the film restored. We found sources from seven different places around the world, and the soundtrack was remixed by the same person who did it in the 80s. And, and basically, it's because of all these people, there's so many people involved, who made this impossible thing possible for us tonight. So enjoy.
[APPLAUSE]
David Pendleton 9:37
Sorry to step on your applause, Sami. But Sami will be here after the film also, to hear your reactions. We'll have just a few minutes for questions or reactions. Sami's very curious to know what you think. Thank you.
John Quackenbush 9:57
And now David Pendleton and Sami Van Ingen.
[LOUD INTERMITTENT HUM DISTORTS SOME AUDIO FROM HERE and VOLUME INCREASES IN AUDIO FROM HERE]
[APPLAUSE]
David Pendleton 10:01
Please welcome back Sami van Ingen. Also, those of you who are sticking around for our later show, we're pushing back the start time of Waterloo Bridge to, for about ten or fifteen minutes, just to give us a few minutes in here before we have to clear the house.
Sami van Ingen 10:18
So, well, we've got a few minutes. Does anybody want, have a comment, or something to say, or to ask, or whatever? Yes.
10:32
[QUESTION INAUDIBLE]
David Pendleton 10:32
I'll just repeat.
[QUESTION INAUDIBLE]
David Pendleton
The question is about the film not being seen in Samoa, as you mentioned in the intro, originally. I happen to, I'm sort of, I know sort of the answer to this question. [LAUGHS] And, and how that relates to the question of authenticity, as Monica Flaherty saw it, because of the fact that she did the sound in Samoan instead of in English, etc.
Sami van Ingen 10:58
Well, first of all, one of her intentions was to bring the film back to the Samoan community. She never did it, because she got entangled with the production, and then the rights, and so on, and so on. And in her version,the Samoan language is not translated. But she did get that translated as well. And when we showed it in ARTE last autumn, the French wanted to have the Samoan translated into French as well. But I don't think the language in itself is that relevant when we see it at least, the Samoan language. But it's kind of a good theme to discuss as well.
I did take, fairly recently, fifty DVDs to the, to the Samoa, to the village, and gave it to the villagers, and most of them had never seen the film. There was like one broken VHS tape in the whole nation, of the film that had been circulating around in the schools, but it had been broken down. And it was quite touching, because most of the people in the village saw their great-grandparents, and grandfathers, and so on, for the first time, great-grandfathers, for the first time, and their grandmothers. And, you know, that's kind of a place where tsunamis have, have destroyed the village several times after the first film was made. And also, after Monica had been there, there's been a tsunami. So they have very little of their own cultural history, images and sounds of that, that place. So, it obviously belongs to them as well, as much as any anybody, and they're kind of intrigued about the tattoo. And, it's kind of interesting that also the tattoo scene is something that resonates with the younger Western audience in different way than it used to in the 20s. Now a lot of people have tattoos, and it has a kind of a new, interesting relevance, I think, to all audiences. But, but yes, definitely, we are going to get the restored version there as well. Of course, it's their film, in many, many ways, of course. And not only Paramount's. [LAUGHS] Yeah. I hope I answered your question.
David Pendleton 13:10
Yeah, there's a question in the back. You want to... Jeremy, is that mic…? Oh, we actually have audience mics. Okay, go ahead and grab the mic. Go, yeah, go ahead.
Audience 1 13:19
I just was curious to what extent that kind of culture and lifestyle shown in the movie is still around, or is that just sort of the distant past now?
Sami van Ingen 13:31
Well, the tattoo– One of the big myths about, about Moana is that Flaherty forced Moana to be tattooed, and that kind of thing. You can see all the men in the film are tattooed. And also, Fa'agase got tattooed after the Flahertys left. And a lot of the women have tattoos then. I think the tattooing did never disappear from there, and that culture.
David Pendleton 13:57
Yeah, because for a long time, I mean, the research that you did would say that when Flaherty got there, tattooing had already died out, and that he actually tried, yeah, exactly! Had Moana get tattooed for his camera.
Sami van Ingen 14:07
Yeah, but I don't think that's quite the case. I think they had a lot of parties. They still have a lot of parties, and they eat wild boar, and I'm sure they eat the turtles as well, and do stuff. But, of course, they watch YouTube, and do Instagram, just like everybody else, of course, as well. But it doesn't negate the other side to their culture. They still, you know, the village is very much, the houses look very similar than they do in the film, still, nowadays. They have a DVD player there, but they still live in very similar kind of, I mean, same kind of fale houses, and, and live off the sea, and farm taro. And the only thing is that when they introduced a new kind of taro there, which the leaves are not eatable, so they eat only the root, which is very, the starch, very unhealthy, and all the goodness is in the leaves. So that's a bit of a tragedy. But, but that's, you know, things change. But, you know, it's also a very poor place, still, and a very, kind of, a third-world country, in many ways. So it's not a paradise, any more than any other place, I think.
Audience 1 14:12
Thank you.
David Pendleton 14:40
Are there other questions from the audience? Oh, there's a couple more. Yeah, okay, we'll get to you. And then there's a woman back there. And then I think I saw one over here. Yeah, go ahead!
Audience 2 15:35
Thanks. I was wondering how much we know about Monica's... the way she worked. I mean, certainly she didn't have a copy of the film when she was over there recording the audio. I mean, it must have been immense planning. Do we know what she did?
Sami van Ingen 15:48
Yes, she had a copy, a 16mm copy of the film. And she showed it to the villagers, and she would then ask them what do they think. Because some of the people were still alive in the village who had, who had been working on the original film. And she would then ask them to figure out what they would say, what Fa'agase would say to Moana. And then she would kind of go to this forest where they used to, you know, do the taro thing, and then she would record with Ricky. Ricky Leacock was there doing the recording, and they would do that. And then she would show a lot of photographs, still photographs of the original film to the villagers, and interview them, and, but it still wasn't a collaboration. She was the boss, and she was still doing it, so, it's a kind of an interesting question. It was a kind of a weird hybrid of a kind of Flaherty collaboration thing, where just like Bob and Frances used to show films they shot to the people they were working with. But, I don't think... It was kind of an interesting, at least attempt to be collaborative in Monica's part. And, she then made a version of the sound film, and then she would go to Hawaii—where there's a big Samoan community and also Fa'agase was living in Hawaii at that time)—and show her latest sound mix to the community, and then get feedback, and then change something. But at the same time, it's not authentic. There's sounds from all around the place. And it's an interesting question, and needs more research to really kind of open up. But definitely, she had good intentions. But I think her methods could be looked at quite critically, I mean, in many ways.
Audience 2 17:35
Thanks.
David Pendleton 17:36
There was a woman back there who had a question. Yeah, didn't you? Do you still have a question?
Audience 3 17:42
[INAUDIBLE: FIRST PART OF QUESTION OBSCURED BY HUM ON AUDIO]
Sami van Ingen
Um, yeah
Audience 3 17:50
[INAUDIBLE] I was thinking about somebody who wasn't here tonight, who would like to see it.
Sami van Ingen 17:53
Well, hopefully. We are trying to get screenings, and you know, maybe have a DVD. Of course, DVD is kind of a dead format already. So we're figuring a way to work with publishers and... It's a rights issue, as well. We showed it in ARTE, in Europe. And there we got obviously a big audience. But in North America, it's more complicated with things, apparently. I mean, yeah. But, of course, the whole motivation for me has been to try to get this into a form that we can show it to people. And then everybody can... It's a great film to discuss issues about documentary, and about Flaherty's problematics. And at least we can see it, and now we can really kind of discuss what's wrong with it, and what's right with it, and also what's right and wrong with the soundtrack, and that kind of thing. So there's a lot of lot of issues, definitely, that's for sure.
David Pendleton 18:55
Well, it’s a great tool for talking about sound in ethnography, too. Because the only time that I'd seen the film before, it was just completely silent. And it's very, very different with those sounds.
Sami van Ingen 19:07
And you have to remember that Paramount had... The studio had a score with the film originally in the 20s. And it was like Mendelssohn, and Bach, and all the Western classical stuff on it. And it'd be interesting, also, to have a concert with that score, and see how that feels, as opposed to Monica's version. And I mean, they’re all different options, I think.
David Pendleton 19:32
Well, it's also interesting to think about the sound in Tabu, which is sort of a follow-up to this film, and which at one point, Murnau and/or Flaherty had hoped that there would be a soundtrack kind of like this for Tabu, and instead, they ended up with a very Western-type score that does have Mendelssohn in it, as well. But, and if you're interested, we'll be showing Tabu next, one week from tonight. Yes, go ahead. Let me, let's get a mic to you. Jeremy?
Audience 4 19:56
Hi, Sami. I came across Flaherty's work when I was this art student, and immediately I came across it, I found out that it was already kind of discredited. But this was the 70s, when everyone hated everyone for their achievements. And I just wondered, you know, since postmodernism, since documentaries changed, and also, in a sense, when we watch his work, we kind of see people acting sometimes. And I think we're aware of it now, a modern audience. But we still see people. And I think that's the most important thing about his work. And I just wondered how much it had changed, you know, the opinions have changed, since the 70s.
Sami van Ingen 20:39
Well,
Audience 4 20:39
About his, you know, his, his contribution to documentary.
Sami van Ingen 20:42
Well, I think every time somebody writes a book about documentary film, they do talk about the fake igloo. It's like, you know, it's, it has to be there, every time, the fake igloo and, but I think the audience has changed, maybe more than the scholars, somehow. That I think that, that fake igloos is not such a big deal, because we know that reality TV is fake, and everything else is fake. And it's always been fake. And you know, the medium is fake. And in this case, it's… I've seen this quite a few times, hundreds of times, and I still discovered– I actually, today I realized that there's the wild boar, when they’re putting the stick into the ground, before they actually make the snare, the wild boar is in the picture, if you look carefully. It's actually hidden under some, some reeds, but it's actually kind of there, in the, in the corner. And, and you can't see it on a VHS, so, so when people have been criticizing this film so, for so many things, they actually haven't even seen it properly. And I think that it's quite funky that now we kind of see quite a lot of what actually, you know, the 20s version was. We see these things. But yeah, I think that's the big contribution of Flaherty's films, or the Flaherty project, or whatever, the Flaherty way, or whatever it is. That it's kind of given this thing to the film culture, this fake igloo thing that we can go on and on about. And different generations have a different take on the, on the staging, and on the manipulation, and of the, you know, who's got the power, and whose images it is, whose property, the cultural property is, and all those kind of things. So in a way, it's, it's kind of a blessing that he did the igloo the way he did, in a way. And, I think that's the kind of interesting thing. That it's definitely super-flawed, in so many ways, if you look at it from any point of view, but at the same time, it's quite a funky film, I think, ultimately. It's kind long, but it is kind of nice, as images, snorkeling, and diving and things. And then the poor old turtle having a really hard time, and, you know, it's kind of it's... I mean, yeah, it's both of those things, I think. It's problematic, and then also has kind of a cinematic wonder. And I think that was his agenda anyway, in the first place.
David Pendleton 22:50
Yeah, I mean, if I could put in my two cents, I think it's true. There are these two tracks, and you have to. And as far as cinema, I mean, I think it's incredibly beautiful cinema and powerful and ingenious cinema. And yes, I think it's up to people to then figure out how the other thing affects the level of cinematic achievement for themselves.
Are there other questions?
Sami van Ingen 23:26
There's somebody in the back there.
David Pendleton 23:27
Oh, okay.
Audience 5 23:28
[INAUDIBLE]
David Pendleton 23:32
Adolf Zucker was the man who founded Paramount.
Audience 5 23:35
Oh, okay. So he produced it in the beginning?
David Pendleton 23:37
Well, he got to put his name on it because Paramount released it, or funded it. Did Paramount actually…? There was a small release in the US when it was...?
Sami van Ingen 23:45
Yeah, it was never– It was kind of released, but only in a few theaters, and they didn't want to advertise it at all. And it really didn't make any, any sense in this part of the world. But in Europe, it was quite successful. It opened like in Finland in two theaters at the same time. And in Sweden, the Swedish Parliament had a special screening where all the Parliament members went and saw this particular film, and they brought it to their national collection, or something. And there's all kind of weird things happened, and, but of course, maybe in Sweden, the whole thing about nudity wasn't that big an issue. Or maybe that was the reason they wanted to see it. Who knows? [LAUGHTER] But, that was the 20s, the wild 20s.
David Pendleton 24:26
Right.
Sami van Ingen 24:27
But
Audience 5 24:27
Yeah.
David Pendleton 24:28
Right. And Paramount had released Nanook of the North, if I'm not mistaken, and had made a lot of money with it. At least, I thought they had.
Sami van Ingen 24:36
No, it wasn't Paramount who released it. But, somebody had made a lot of money. And the way they wanted to capitalize on this new phenomena of making these films really cheaply, because you have to remember, Nanook was a really, really cheap film to make, and then it actually made a lot of money. So they thought that's a great business model. But when the Flahertys came back from Samoa with three hours of this, they realized that they can't, you know, it doesn't have a good business model for them. So, they wanted to get rid of it as quickly as possible.
David Pendleton 25:09
And in England, John Grierson saw it, and brought Flaherty to England, which we'll talk about at a future screening, and coined the word "documentary" in his review of Moana.
Sami van Ingen 25:19
Actually, he said "documentary value."
David Pendleton 25:22
Ah.
Sami van Ingen 25:22
...in that review, and it's also, when I watch this, I think there's kind of a documentary value with at least the tattooing, because we can see in the beginning that he is tattooed, and the end, he gets it done somehow. There's some kind of a documentary value, but is it documentary film? Is it true? Did it really happen? You know, who knows?
David Pendleton 25:42
Right. Right. Well, we should probably make way for the folks waiting for Waterloo Bridge. But Sami will be outside, if you have other questions, or want to talk to him more. And thanks. Thank you very much, Sami.
Sami van Ingen 25:55
Thanks for coming.
[APPLAUSE]
David Pendleton 25:56
And tomorrow, for Elephant Boy, Sami will be here too. Thanks!
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