The Influence of Fiction and Cinematic Excess on the Factual

Abstract

any popular Hollywood films about Oceania or set in the Pacific have been criticised and dismissed by Pacific scholars and film-makers as grossly misrepresentative of the region. Nevertheless, both critically acclaimed and populist films form an integral part of the mediascape within which more contemporary factual films by and about Pacific communities are situated. In many cases the dialectic between Hollywood and contemporary performance in the Pacific is strategic and self-conscious; however, in documentary formats, this dialectic can be problematic and consequently overlooked or repressed. Drawing upon the operations of irony in contemporary Pacific screen production, Thompson's description of cinematic excess and Nichols's elaboration of documentary excess, this paper examines how the critically acclaimed, anti-colonial, pro-self-determination factual film Act of War: Overthrow of the Hawaiian Nation reflects the return of repressed Hollywood imagery in its discursive practices.