Watch Ña Noniep
Film producer and director Jack Niedenthal has generously made the first two Microwwave films, Ña Noniep and Yokwe Bartowe available to the public. Watch the show below and read all above it below that. Thank you Jack!
“It was thrilling to see a film that was conceptualized, written, cast, filmed and edited in the Marshall Islands with a Marshallese cast and spoken mainly in Marshallese language with English subtitles…Marshallese kids can now see that their lives and reality are worthy of exploration in film…”
–Dartmouth College Professor Andrew Garrod
The Noniep (Kyle Trevor) grabs Liki (Randon Jack). Photo: Suzanne Chutaro
Ña Noniep: I Am the Good Fairy
Ña Noniep deals with the spiritual battle between a ri-anijnij (an evil Marshallese maker of black magic) and a noniep (a Marshallese fairy-like creature) for the soul of a 13-year old boy, Liki.
The film, made by Microwave Films, portrays Liki as an “off-the-chart” brilliant student who can solve math problems without using pencil or paper and who can read a thick novel in a few days.
His goal is to attend high school in America. Through no fault of his own, after a serious car accident involving his father and the family of his best friend, Miko, Liki finds his life threatened by Miko’s evil grandmother, Lijimu, who is a woman known throughout the islands as a horribly diabolical maker of black magic.
Lijimu casts a spell on Liki, and this drives the unusually nice, polite and studious boy, insane. Only the noniep can help him, but first the noniep must overcome the enormous power of the evil Lijimu.
This enchanting battle is waged before the eyes of the boy’s parents, Tomi and Delia, his best friend Miko, and his classmates who are all powerless to help him as he descends into a hellish existence. They are forced to watch as Liki deteriorates at an alarmingly rapid pace fighting an illness that no doctor or hospital can cure.
The Marshallese language film, with English subtitles, stars Randon Jack, Lulani Ritok, Kyle Trevor, Netha Gideon, Matiti Johnson, Alson Kelen and Sarah Enyeart.
All of the music in the film was performed by four eighth-grade girls — Kery Ann Lejjena, Carly Ann Note, Lulani Note and Cinderella Lajidrik — from the Majuro Cooperative School (MCS), a private, secular school presently serving grades pre-K through 9th.
The film was written, directed and produced by Jack Niedenthal. Suzanne Chutaro served as assistant producer and director.
The movie opened to the public at the 3-plex K & K Theaters, in Majuro, on March 6, 2009, and ran for 2 weeks, ending on March 19, 2009.
The film is dedicated to the late Mayor of Bikini Atoll, Kataejar Jibas, who died on October 2, 2008, from injuries resulting from a car accident, and to the late SGT Solomon T. Sam, the first Marshallese soldier killed in Iraq on December 8, 2008.
Microwave Films of the Marshall Islands is a community based film production company in the Marshall Islands.
Below is a Radio New Zealand interview with producer Jack Niedenthal:
“I told some of my Marshallese friends to come and watch Ña Noniep at my house…
My place was packed worse than the Superbowl!”
–Herbie Lorennij Jeik, a Marshall Islander living in Providence, RI, May 7, 2009
