Pileni paualala. Dried giant clams in the Reef Islands

Original title Pileni paualala

The Reef Islands Ethnographic Film Project was started in 1994 by two anthropologists, Jens Pinholt and Peter I. Crawford, and village communities in Bekapoa, Fenualoa and Vaiakau. Field and film visits took place in 1994, 1995-1998, 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2017. This film is based on one such visit in June 2015, by Peter I. Crawford and Birgitte Hansen, a nutrition expert. They focused on a diachronic study of nutrition, collecting information in three villages and comparing it with material from the 1970s and the 1990s. Pileni was one of the villages, a so-called Polynesian outlier. Although the atoll is located outside the main reef lagoon, it forms part of the Reef Islands, Temotu Province, Solomon Islands. A clam shell is called paua there and the dried meat called paualala. In this case it is the meat of huetea or giant clam (tridacna gigas). An entrepreneurial young man, John Knoxson, helped by family and friends, has found an innovative way of earning some cash income from what nature provides.

Author/s Peter I. Crawford

Peter I. Crawford is an anthropologist, publisher and filmmaker. He has been an active member of the Nordic Anthropological Film Association (NAFA) since the late 1970s and is general secretary and chairman of NAFA’s annual film selection committee. He is a professor of visual anthropology at UiT, Arctic University of Norway. He has written extensively on visual anthropology and ethnographic filmmaking, and has wide experience in teaching the subject both theoretically and practically.

Research Peter I. Crawford and Birgitte Hansen
Photography Peter I. Crawford
Sound Peter I. Crawford
Editing Ralph Veraart and Orsolya Veraart (CinéTrans), Peter I. Crawford