A crappy film

It had the promise of being a reasonably light evening's entertainment, as some 70 odd students and others gathered in the Union Hall on Sunday for the 'International Evening' organised by a local Fiji Student club. A host of multicoloured sarees and graceful, flowing 'batik' mingled with Levi jeans to an assorted number of old dance tunes. Included in the evening's programme were several songs and dance sketches, and also a somewhat biting but enlightening description of life in Fiji by a young Fijian student.

But the evening's entertainment took a diabolical turn when the organisers began screening two films to fill the interlude between dancing and refreshments. The organisers no doubt had their excuse -they had to provide a full programme for the evening and what better way than to screen a couple of films sponsored by the Fiji Visitors Bureau Board of Fiji. And the films were a credit to their sponsors. The sun-washed islands of the Fiji group were depicted in true fashion as the bejewelled, palm-fringed resort of sun-seeking tourists from all over the world. It was all there, the happy; innocent; cheerful people with flowers in their ears, of lovely sandy beaches, etc.

... The films ended with the appropriate lyrics addressed to tourists to Fiji for 'a time to stop caring'.

This sort of 'cultural aggression' that has in the last few decades wrought havoc on the peoples of the tropics, reducing them to merely picturesque objects forming part of the landscape is now rapidly assuming global dimensions. That a student club within the university should actively propagate such films is indeed a sad reflection on the state of affairs at Victoria.

Only a year ago, another student club within the university had used union facilities to propagate a series of pretentiously moralising films on the Moral Rearmament cult. Only a year later, another local club takes upon itself to play host to the cause of imperialism.