Vilsoni Hereniko

Vilsoni Hereniko (born 13 October 1954) is a Rotuman playwright, screenwriter, film director, academic, author, actor, poet, and master weaver. He is best known as the writer-director of The Land Has Eyes (Rotuman: Pear ta ma ʻon maf), the first feature film shot on Rotuma,^[1] and for a long academic career as a scholar of Pacific literature, theatre and film.^[2] Hereniko has served as director of Pacific studies centres, edited the academic journal The Contemporary Pacific, lectured widely, and in recent years has produced short films, documentaries, and scholarly essays that foreground Indigenous aesthetics and cultural practice.

He is a professor at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Hawaiʻi.

Vilsoni Hereniko was born in Mea village, Hapmak, Itu'ti'u District, Rotuma, Fiji, on 13 October 1954 and is the youngest of eleven children.^[3] He won a scholarship to Queen Victoria School in Fiji and later studied at the University of the South Pacific (USP). Hereniko received a Master of Education from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and a Ph.D. in literature and language from the University of the South Pacific.^[4][5] His early experience of Rotuman oral storytelling strongly influenced his later creative and scholarly work.^[4]

Hereniko began publishing plays in the mid-1970s. His stage works—many of which have been produced throughout the Pacific and are taught in schools—include Don't Cry, Mama,^[6] A Child for Iva, Sera's Choice,^[7] The Monster, Last Virgin in Paradise (co-written with Teresia Teaiwa), Sina & Tinilau (a children’s book and stage adaptation), Fine Dancing, Love 3 Times (commissioned by Kumu Kahua Theatre) and Moana: The Rising of the Sea (a musical about climate change that toured Bergen, Copenhagen, Brussels and St. Andrews in 2015 and adapted into a film under the title of Moana Rua: The Rising of the Sea).^[8]

His books include Woven Gods: Female Clowns and Power in Rotuma^[9] and the edited volume Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics^[10], and Identity in the New Pacific (co-edited with Rob Wilson).^[11] In 1997 Hereniko received the Elliot Cades Writing Award for his body of creative work.^[4]

Hereniko wrote and directed the feature film The Land Has Eyes (Pear ta ma ʻon maf), filmed on Rotuma and premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004; the film also screened at numerous international festivals and was Fiji’s official submission for the Academy Awards.^[12][13] It received the "Best Overall Entry" award at the 2005 Wairoa Maori Film Festival, and the "Best Dramatic Feature" award at the 2004 ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival.^[14]

The film tells the story of Viki (Sapeta Taito), a young Rotuman woman shamed as the daughter of a man wrongly accused of theft who finds inspiration in the legend of a “Warrior Woman” from Rotuman oral tradition.^[3]

Hereniko’s earlier film work includes short films and documentaries such as The Han Maneak Su in a Rotuman Wedding (The Rotuman Clown)^[15] and Just Dancing.^[16] In recent years he has directed an animated short Sina Ma Tinirau (2022)^[17] and a narrative Woven, a story about an indigenous basket weaver who struggles to complete a coconut leaf basket in a city of high rises.^[18]

Hereniko has served on the jury and selection committee of the Hawai‘i International Film Festival. The Land Has Eyes, set in his native Rotuma, was his first feature film, in 2004. It was presented at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004, and was Rotuma's official submission to the 2006 Academy Awards.

• The Land Has Eyes (2004), Writer and Director

• Two Plays, 1987, ISBN 982-02-0015-6
• The monster and other plays, 1989, ISBN 982-02-0028-8
• The wicked cat, 1991, ISBN 982-01-0073-9
• Last virgin in paradise: A serious comedy, 1993, ISBN 982-02-0084-9
• Woven Gods: Female Clowns and Power in Rotuma, 1995, ISBN 0-8248-1655-2
• Sina & Tinilau, 1997 (children's book), ISBN 982-02-0127-6
• Inside Out: Literature, Cultural Politics, and Identity in the New Pacific, 1999 (as co-editor), ISBN 0-8476-9142-X

• Interview with Vilsoni Hereniko
• Biography on the website of the University of Hawai'i Archived 2010-05-28 at the Wayback Machine
• Biography on Rotuma.net