A three-year Pacific climate research and storytelling documentary and journalism project has contributed to a disruption and renewal theme in Pacific Island Countries development. Focused initially on Fiji, the project has involved three pairs of postgraduate students engaging with climate crisis challenges. Responding originally to the devastation and tragedy wrought in Fiji by Severe Tropical Cyclone Winston in 2016, the Pacific Media Centre embarked on the Bearing Witness journalism project by sending two postgraduate students to Viti Levu to document and report on the impact of climate change (Robie & Chand, 2017). Their main component was a multimedia report on Daku village in the Rewa River delta area. This was followed in 2017 with a series of reports leading to a multimedia package on the relocation of the remote inland village of Tukuraki (Robie, 2018). The third episode focused far more strongly on documentary with reports on waka navigation and climate change, the ‘ghost village’ of Vunidogoloa and a ‘homecoming’ short feature about the Banaban people of Rabi and the impact on them caused by climate change. The project explores Friere’s notions of ‘critical consciousness’ as they might relate to teaching documentary-making and also draw on the concept of talanoa journalism.

This article is an attempt to document some of the filmmaking processes and highlight some of the specific factors that determined the final form of the film Cap Bocage. I see this as an opportunity to outline more personal reflections on process. This article will firstly give context to some of the filmmaking challenges by discussing the idea of the voice of a documentary (Nichols, 2010, p. 256) as it relates to subject matter. Here I will emphasise the idea of a personal approach to story that sometimes runs adjacent to the traditional techniques one may find in more expositional work or in a purely journalistic rendering of the narrative. This article also explores two other works that concern themselves with militant struggle in New Caledonia. One is the feature length drama Rebellion (Kassowitz, 2011) and the other a documentary: Tjibaou le pardon (Dagneau, 2006). While the approach to the history of militancy in the films is different, both works are good examples of the challenges filmmakers face while tracing stories involving conflict or societal trauma.

A group of Melanesian women march behind an anti-mining ‘No BCL No Mining’ banner, across a small field in the now-autonomous region of Bougainville. Their protest is ostensibly unseen by the rest of the world. Their protest efforts are local, gender-specific, indigenous, and part of a wider movement to stop any production on the Panguna copper mine. This conflict claimed an estimated 10,000 lives in the 1990s civil war. This photograph is one of the many that we have selected to mark the 10th anniversary of the Pacific Media Centre in Auckland University of Technology’s School of Communication Studies...

It is my pleasure and honour to write a preface to this book prepared as part of the series of publications celebrating 10 years of the Pacific Media Centre (PMC). Before taking up my current role as Head of the School of Communication Studies at Auckland University of Technology, I had been writing on alternative media for some time. My new role has allowed me to witness first-hand the dedication, labour and passion that a journalist-academic, David Robie, and his colleagues have put into practice to create a channel for the voiceless to have a voice, a platform for the unseen to be seen, and an arena for the ‘others’ to deliberate their ideas...

Papa Bilong Chimbu is Verena Thomas' affectionate examination of the life of her great uncle John Nilles. Father Nilles was a German missionary who worked in the highlands of Papua New Guinea for more than 50 years. Thomas steers us through Father Nilles' career and life as we return with her to the Chimbu region to meet his friends, parishioners, those who converted, educated and supported.