“Colonialism doesn’t die. Its echoes remain for a long, long time.”

Tropical memories, dark family secrets, and the harsh legacy of colonialism collide in Fiji Memory, Colonial Time, the fascinating account of an elderly woman’s emotional return to the tropical land of her birth. Searching for remnants of her past, Jean faces a severe crisis of identity, as her idealized memories of a colonial childhood clash with her radical politics and the fractured political and cultural present of Fiji, a country trying to emerge from a series of coups. As she travels across the beautiful island on her personal journey she narrates the tale of her great-grandfather, G.H. Lee, whose sense of adventure, exploitation and arrogance, culminated in the committing of a violent crime. Ultimately going beyond one family’s story, the film reveals the larger story of Fiji through its current inhabitants and examines how colonialism fractures and disrupts the identities of both the colonized and the colonizer.

The film is currently in the final stages of post-production and the filmmaking team is gearing up to screen it at festivals, colleges, and communities across the Pacific and around the world.