The brutally honest Orator
By Lagipoiva Cherelle Jackson REVIEW: "You know why women don't want to be Orators, because they don't want to show their breasts in public." These were the words of Samoan High Chief Tagaloa, squinting through his leathery brown skin framed by a light trim of siga (white hair) as he spoke to Saili, the main actor in the movie The Orator . When this was said, my 8-year-old nephew Barry Uelese Sapatu nudged me in Magik Cinema in Apia and said: "But aunty, Grandma is an orator, and she doesn't show her breasts in public, or does she?" Naturally the answer was "no" but as my mother Vaasiliifiti Moelagi can attest, it's no easy task being a female Orator, let alone a very short one. That much was clear in the film by Tusi Tamasese.I watched the film, not as a journalist, but as a daughter of an Orator, as a girl from Savaii and as a fiercely proud Samoan. Those three factors meant I went into the film, highly sceptical of this New Z...
