Samoa (1956)

This is the story of a happy people in an island paradise, and begins with a description of life in Samoa. We see a village, boys swimming in a lagoon, and meet the village "Taupou", or ceremonial hostess. The rest of the villagers are seen in daily tasks - gathering food and making copra. We see a village "Fono", or gathering of chiefs who make and administer laws of the village, and witness the ceremony of mixing and drinking kava. Malio'o, high chief, proposes building ceremonial guest house. A boys' group entertains the chiefs with a skit about tattooing, and a villagers' group describes in song a beautiful school they wish built. The one daily hot meal is prepared. Later the village boys are found playing hooky in the local swimming hole, and we see considerable by-play in the waterfall and sliding rocks, with Malio'o and others finally joining them in their water sports. A small boy with no sisters finally tires of doing girls' work around his home and moves in with relatives, a normal solution in the mores of this close community. Fishing is an important source of food; women fish in shallow waters. Men underwater and at the lagoon. One man is endagered when his canoe capsizes in a sudden squall in the sea, and a small boy figures in his rescue from an offshore rock. Next day his friends fell a tree from which they make him a new canoe. The guest house (fale tele) is seen being constructed, and a series of housewarming festivities begin, climaxed by an evening "fia fia" or "happy time". We close on the villagers dancing in their island paradise.

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