Kilim Taem (review)

Kilim Taem. 50 minutes, VHS, color, 1998. In Bislama, with English subtitles. Directors, Anthony Mullins, Randall Wood; producer, Jan Cattoni; distributor, UNICEF, Fiji. Email: UNICEF@is.com.fj

Kilim Taem (Killing time) is a documentary based on interviews with young people in Vanuatu's capital, Port Vila. It addresses the problems young ni-Vanuatu are currently facing, especially in urban areas. Fifty percent of the population of Vanuatu is under eighteen; half of them have been born since Vanuatu achieved independence in 1980. The problems young people now face did not exist even ten years ago, and, until this film was made and screened, most people in the country had not noticed the critical, rapid changes taking place. Young people themselves noticed, of course, and in the mid-1990s coined an ironic self-description, designating themselves as "SPR," or as the "SPR Kampani." The initials stand for spirim pablik rod (hitting the road), the "SPR Company" is a play on the idea of a business--these are the people whose work it is to walk the roads of Port Vila.

All the people who appear in the film are under twenty-five years old, both interviewers and interviewees. They speak with remarkable openness and freedom, and a number of controversial issues are raised, notably in relation to police brutality, political instablity, and crime. What is perhaps even more remarkable is the way in which people speak vulnerably about their hopes, dreams, and disappointments. One girl speaks of her dream to have a job, so much a dream that she cannot even imagine what that job would be. Young men long for the dignity of self-employment. A young woman interviewed in Port Vila prison, whose constantly twisting fingers expose her humiliation with painful clarity, explains that she stole because she was, in effect, too shy to hustle for work.

The film was made by a group of young filmmakers from Griffith University in Australia, in conjunction with and at the invitation of the Vanuatu Young People's Project, which is based at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre. It aims, through strategies such as research, video production, and advocacy, to provide a forum in which young ni-Vanuatu can speak out. Through it young people participated in all aspects of the film production, including planning, selecting, and organizing locations and individuals to be interviewed, and shooting the footage, as well as assisting with lighting and sound. Editing was carried out at the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, so that young people influenced many decisions about the way in which the film was put together. The Young People's Project was the initative of the anthropologist Jean Mitchell working in collaboration with the director of the Vanuatu Cultural Centre, Ralph Regenvanu. Mitchell's achievement in directing the research program on which the film is based is very considerable.

The central issue the film addresses is unemployment and its consequence, idleness. Young men walk the streets, watch videos, make and drink home-brewed alcohol or kava, engage in ae-soping (window shopping), go dancing. Young women tend to do housework in the settlements around Port Vila, and often get pregnant very young. Some interviewees talk about how poverty leads them to thefts of garden produce and household goods. The problem of education is also a focus. Many young people have received only a basic education because their parents were unable or unwilling to pay school fees. However, even secondary education does not guarantee a job, and where people do find work, it is unlikely to be concomitant with their educational level.

This is the first generation of ni-Vanuatu who do not have a strong and enduring link to land in the islands. Affiliation to a place (captured in the Bislama expression man ples) is basic to ni-Vanuatu identity. Here, for the first time, are people who may never have been to their home island and who, even while they will identify themselves as belonging to it, have no sense of...