Hey everyone!
It's been awhile since we last checked in and it's been a big couple of weeks. If you follow our facebook and instagram pages, you might have seen.
The biggest thing so far is that we finally made tickets available. Many of you had been waiting to find out when tickets would be on sale and we finally have an answer. The fact that we were able to make the tickets available also meant that we've been able to finalise our program which, I'm now excited to say you can now find here.
Not only that, we're working towards getting a merchandise page up so that those who have been asking can buy our Pasifika Film Fest T's and hoodies. More info on that to come.
Finally as part of our program, we've finalised a screening of the classic, Return to Paradise, on the Saturday night of the festival. Return to Paradise was filmed in Mata'utu, Samoa back in 1953. To follow this, we have a special reading of renowned New Zealand playwright Victor Rodger's play My Name is Gary Cooper, which is based on the experiences of the cast of Return to Paradise in Samoa. This reading will be lead by Samoan actor Robbie Magasiva (Wentworth, Sione's Wedding). We're excited to be able to showcase yet another format for viewing Pacific stories, through theatre and vintage understandings of the Polynesian lifestyle.
All this and some of the team managed to hit up Fiji Day on the weekend as well! I am only being honest when I say, that I had to stop myself from driving to the beach instead of Liverpool on Saturday (it was quite warm) but I was instantly glad I was there. Not just because of my 2 glasses of 'otai (from 'Loketi Otai'), but also because of the amount of Pacific enterprise I saw, not least of which was the stall 'Taki Mai', an organisation that has created flavoured kava. It has all the same health and 'relaxation' benefits as traditional kava, with flavours like Guava, Coconut and Banana. Don't hate, it tastes pretty good.
So that's been us over the last couple of weeks. We've had a couple of mishaps along the way, but we will always endeavour to rectify issues and present the best possible solutions. I still haven't crossed off 2 thirds of my to-do list, so I will now get back to it. And thus the name of this weeks blog post. You could interpret as, we cant and we wont stop because we've set out to deliver you all something brilliant. Or in my situation, you can take it as 'Can't Stop, Won't Stop' because I've been looking at emails for so long Ive become delirious and I literally can't stop.
Mahalo plenty!
E