Page 35 - Fiji Traveller 2024 Issue 6

THE HEALING POWER OF ART

Nina Nawalowalo returns home

By Samantha Magick

When director Nina Nawalowalo shared her film, A Boy Called Piano at the
Samabula Juvenile Centre late last year, she was struck by the scenes that
resonated with its young audience.
The movie centres on the journey of Fa’amoana John Luafutu and his
son Matthias. Fa’amoana moved to New Zealand from Samoa as a child
and became a ward of the state at the age of eleven, where he experienced
abuse, isolation and trauma. Discovering the work of Samoan author Albert
Wendt and this own abilities in music, writing and performance, provided a
path towards healing for Fa’amoana, now a well-known artist in his own right.
Nawalowalo has collaborated with the Luafutu family over many years, co-
creating two stage plays, a radio drama and the film in partnership with Tom
McCrory, her co-founder at The Conch theatre company.
She said making the film was an entirely different experience from theatre,
and a delicate process, as she did not want to revisit or trigger trauma.
Nawalowalo said it was also important to work with a small ‘quiet’ team, that
trusted her judgement as director, particularly when they were revisiting the
site where Fa’amoana was held.
“You're feeling for the moment. That’s what I like, it's to be really in the
moment. And that's something over the years that I know is the magic; it’s the
magic of not getting pushed by a team of people going ‘What are we doing?’,
and just making sure everyone is quiet, and is able to be nimble.”
Nawalowalo, who has family ties to Kadavu, says it was a privilege to show
the film in detention centres, both here in Fiji and in New Zealand.
A Boy Called Piano intersperses narrative from Fa’amoana with a spare
but evocative piano soundtrack, and beautiful images of children playing and
diving underwater, running across sand dunes, riding horses and of the ulafala

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