Client
DGEE
Year
2023
Deliverable
Animated short film
Role
Direction, Drawing, 3D modeling, Rigging and Animation
Before screens, there was the sky.
The DGEE trusted us with the introduction video for ebooks.education.pf — its open-access digital library, where nine Polynesian languages live alongside the legends of Māui, Tāfa’i, and Rātā, and the tools teachers use to pass them on.
We could have done what we usually do for this kind of brief: voice-over, screen captures, a tagline.
We did something else.
The gesture
A Polynesian navigator, on her canoe, at night. She looks up. She recognizes the stars — as her ancestors have for thousands of years. And then, with the exact gesture she would make over an iPad, she sweeps the sky. The stars give way. In their place, the site.
The gesture that helped our ancestors find an island is the same one that helps a child today find a legend.
Why it matters
As Henri Hiro reminded us back in 1990: if we want the culture to continue, the Polynesian must write. Reo mā’ohi, French, English — it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he speaks.
ebooks.education.pf is where it happens now.
And hopefully, once they’ve found what they came for, the children will close their screens and look back up at the sky.