Using Media Technologies for Cultural Expressions

Young Cultural Dancer at Waigani Primary School 2009

The quick pace of electronic media development in the world has no time to wait for people like me. Until recently, more specifically, a month ago, I found myself, entering the world of Facebook as a reluctant traveller. Like so many people I know about these technological innovations that are shaping the world second by second and minute by minute. Like many people, the decision to participate in these technologies, is one of experiment and see where it leads me to.

Apart from discovering many people I know on Facebook I also realized that there are many wonderful things one could do with electronic media technologies. Apart from developing one’s own social network you can have instant communication with friends online, share conversations on common topics, post notices, links to news and information of interests, and even share photographs and videos. One could easily do that with mobile phones, laptops, or from a desktop anywhere in the world.

I have been keeping a blog: http://www.stevenswindow.blogspot.com for along time that when I discovered I could link my blog to my Facebook page I was thrilled. Now I can update my blog every week and have it linked to the Facebook as a way of sharing my thoughts and experiences as posted on my blog. Since I moved to Hawaii five months ago I hardly wrote every week or have any PNG visitors to my blog. Now with a link to my Facebook and a redesigned home page I have a slow trickle of visitors from PNG to the blog.

I have already shared two recent posts on my blog with readers and Facebook friends. Now I am posting a short videoclip of Waigani Primary School Cultural Day in 2009. The video captures the cultural pride displayed by our children in their schools. My children like other children in their school enjoy participating in their school cultural days.

This short video, I hope, will inspire others to take advantage of the electronic media technologies at our doorsteps by using them to promote cultural pride in our people. There are already hundreds of short videos on the internet, especially on YouTube. Some of them are very good that I have found them as useful teaching materials. Imagine if we have millions of short videos made by Papua New Guineans about themselves it could change the way other people see us. My favourite is this video "Moresby Modern Trailer".

Visual image is a powerful medium today. For example, PNG music videos that people enjoy watching are popular to many PNG viewers. Some of these are now available on the internet.

Making good short video documentaries that many people can access and enjoy is good, but I think making full video documentaries is one challenge for Papua New Guineans to think about. The reasons for full length documentaries are many. This year’s Oscar nominated film "Sun Come Up", for example is a video documentary about rising sea levels and the associated catastrophy on small island communities in PNG.

I have benefited from using previews of film documentaries made by non Papua New Guineans about Papua New Guinea. I am looking forward to the day when Papua New Guineans will take up the challenge to make their own full length film documentaries and feature films soon that can touched the world.

The first PNG Writer: Hosea Linge

With so much going on around us we tend to forget about important foundations of our history. I could not get out of my mind the much neglected discussion on the first Papua New Guinean writer. Every now and then we need to acknowledge the important parts of our history as we move forward. I would like to acknowledge the first Papua New Guinean to write a book in the 1930s. A New Irelander by name of Ligeremaluoga wrote and published his book under the title The Erstwhile Savage: An Account of the Life of Ligeremaluoga in 1932. Ligeremaluoga is from Kono village in New Ireland Province. Ligeremaluoga’s book is by all accounts the first written account by a South Pacific Islander. Most of what we know as Pacific writing is dated to the 1960s and 1970s. Last month I presented a paper at the University of Hawaii to discuss another early Papua New Guinean writer by name of Ahuia Ova of Hanuabada, who published his memoirs in 1939, six years after Ligeremaluoga’s autobiography. ...

Well Done! Nora

Melanesian writers: Regis Tove Stella (PNG), Nora Vagi Brash (PNG), Sam Alasia (Solomon Islands), USP Fiji campus, 1999. One of the outstanding playwright and poet to emerge in Papua New Guinea is Nora Vagi Brash. She remains the foremost and the only Papua New Guinean female playwright. Nora was involved with acting in amateur theatre, radio plays, and street theatre in early 1970s. Her exposure to the world of theatre in England inspired her to write her own plays on her return to Papua New Guinea. The National Arts School employed Nora as an assistant lecturer in puppetry, dance, and drama. She then moved on to become one of the two artistic directors with the National Theatre Company. Nora wrote her own scripts for the puppets using tradional stories of Papua New Guinea. The National Theatre Company toured local villages and performed in the streets. They went to the Pacific Arts Festival in Rotorua and Wellington, New Zealand. They also danced in Point Venus ...

Milky Pine Power

Young Milky Pine ( Alstonia scholaris ) The importance of plant names in the local language is an example of a complex structure of meaning. Different plants are used for specific purposes in our traditional societies. The same plant known by a common name can have sacred names to different people. Most often these sacred names are linked to myths, rituals, and spiritual powers. Many people know the general names for plants, but different species have a different name or an additional word to indicate colour, wild plants, domesticated plants, or cultivated. Where plants have medicinal and ritual values they may have sacred names known only to those who claim ownership of the plant and its powers. The tanget ( Cordyline fruticosa ), for example, is generally known in Nagum Boiken language as hawa . This name includes the cultivated ones, which are red in color and appears in long and short round leaves. The green wild ones are...

Fern Ridge (Safla Rama) Digest

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