# Moana (1926 film)
*Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age* is a 1926 American silent documentary film directed by [Robert J. Flaherty](https://www.edgepedia.org/robert-j-flaherty) that depicts the rites, customs, and daily life of a Samoan family on the island of Savai'i. It holds a fixed place in film history as the first film to be labeled a "documentary": the Scottish filmmaker and critic John Grierson, reviewing it in the *New York Sun* on 8 February 1926 under the pen name "The Moviegoer", described its "documentary value" as "being a visual account of events in the daily life of a Polynesian youth and his family", coining a new word for an emerging genre.[1](https://workforce.libretexts.org/Workbench/Fim_Production_P8fgsGtaYP/07%3A_Film_Truth) • [2](https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/downloads/3f5a8da1-8762-42b1-be93-1df6f02758a6?locale=en)
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Full title | *Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age*; alternate title *Moana of the South Seas*[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) |
| Release | New York opening 7 February 1926; official release date 22 February 1926[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) |
| Production | Famous Players-Lasky Corp., distributed by Paramount Pictures Corp.; directed, written, and photographed by Robert Flaherty, with Frances H. Flaherty as assistant director[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) |
| Filming | April 1923 to December 1924 in Samoa, mainly at the village of Safune on Savai'i[4](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/M/Moana1926.html) • [5](https://creativenz.govt.nz/news-and-blog/2022/06/15/02/24/51/moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926-film-symposium-with-pasifika-filmmakers-and-special-screening) |
| Format | Silent, black and white, seven reels / 6,133 feet; thought to be the first feature film shot entirely on panchromatic filmstock[4](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/M/Moana1926.html) • [3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) |
| Cast | Ta'avale Uni as Moana, Tu'ungaita as Moana's mother, Fa'amgase, Pe'a[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) • [13](https://www.unseen-cinema.com/files/art/MOANAPressRelease.pdf) |
| Survival | A print exists in the Museum of Modern Art film archive; the film is in the public domain in the USA[4](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/M/Moana1926.html) |
## Spoilers
### Content and staging
Flaherty had originally intended to make a film about sea monsters, but finding none, he made a film that set aside plot in favor of vignettes of everyday life in Safune: tattooing, capturing a giant turtle, fishing, cooking, picking coconuts, and making [tapa cloth](https://www.edgepedia.org/tapa-cloth).[9](https://www.creativebloq.com/entertainment/movies-tv-shows/the-original-moana-looked-very-different-to-disneys-movies-but-was-it-any-more-authentic) • [8](https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F5296/) In the film, Moana, son of a tribal chief, teaches his younger brother to hunt, fish, and gather coconuts, chooses a maiden to marry, and undergoes the "manhood" ceremony with the village's master tattooer, a process using hard bone needles that takes seven days and nights.[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) The tattoo ritual (the *pe'a*) forms the film's climax; the [American Society of Cinematographers](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-society-of-cinematographers) notes that this sequence was staged especially for the film, since the age-old practice was dying out.[7](https://theasc.com/articles/wrap-shot-moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926)
The film was entirely staged. Moana and his "family" were not related; Flaherty cast each role based on appearance and acting ability, and even the name Moana was his selection.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) Rather than capturing Samoa as it was in the 1920s, the filmmakers purposely recreated an older way of life before it passed from memory. Frances Flaherty, the film's co-producer, later explained that the community was "making the film with us", and that rushes were screened for village elders "who still remembered the old forgotten ways and could help us to recapture them and tell us if our film was true".[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) Dr Dionne Fonoti, a senior lecturer at the National University of Samoa, notes that many elements Flaherty depicted were no longer practiced by the 1920s, when Samoan dress and ideas about modesty had evolved significantly; women appear topless throughout the film.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster)
## Production
After the success of *Nanook of the North* (1922), his pioneering portrait of Inuit life in the [Hudson Bay](https://www.edgepedia.org/hudson-bay) region, Flaherty had his choice of subject for a follow-up, and he chose Samoa.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) Jesse L. Lasky commissioned him to make a travel feature, and Flaherty and his wife Frances traveled to the remote Samoan island of Savai'i, taking a new Akeley "pancake" camera and a Prizmacolor two-color camera.[7](https://theasc.com/articles/wrap-shot-moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926) Flaherty arrived in Samoa in April 1923 and remained until December 1924.[4](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/M/Moana1926.html) The American Film Institute catalog records that he and Frances, serving as assistant director, spent twenty months living among the Samoan people.[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography)
**Location and equipment.** The tropical climate posed real technical problems: the heat melted the bearings in an Akeley camera, and the lack of available ice made it difficult to develop negatives at the proper chemical bath temperature.[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) To process his film, Flaherty set up a laboratory in a freshwater cave; film historian Bruce Posner, who oversaw a 2014 digital restoration of the film, relates that Flaherty drank the water there and accidentally poisoned himself, spending several months near death.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) The Prizmacolor camera malfunctioned on location, and the film was shot instead on panchromatic black-and-white stock, on which it is thought to be the first feature to be photographed throughout.[4](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/M/Moana1926.html) The American Society of Cinematographers' history notes that Flaherty used color filters to dramatize skies and foliage, giving the film what the New Zealand archive Ngā Taonga describes as an almost stereoscopic look, with island foliage rendered in varying shades of silvery-gray.[7](https://theasc.com/articles/wrap-shot-moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926) • [8](https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F5296/)
**Location disagreement.** Most sources place the filming at the village of Safune on Savai'i in Western Samoa.[5](https://creativenz.govt.nz/news-and-blog/2022/06/15/02/24/51/moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926-film-symposium-with-pasifika-filmmakers-and-special-screening) • [8](https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F5296/) The AFI catalog, however, cites a July 1925 *Photoplay* report that filming occurred near Pago Pago on the Samoan island of Tutuila, and lists the film's geographic location as [American Samoa](https://www.edgepedia.org/american-samoa).[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography)
## Reception and the birth of a word
The film broke box-office records at the Rialto Theatre in New York City, grossing $6,100 on a Sunday and $3,100 on the following Monday, as reported in the 14 February 1926 *Film Daily*.[3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) On wider release, however, it flopped; one reviewer summed it up as "Instead of entertaining, it interests".[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) The commercial problem, in the ASC account, was that the film had no dramatic conflict because the islanders lived an idyllic life; the hoped-for "struggle for existence" was absent.[7](https://theasc.com/articles/wrap-shot-moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926) Moana was prepared in 11 reels for a roadshow release, but studio executives had it cut to seven reels for the normal 1926 release.[7](https://theasc.com/articles/wrap-shot-moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926)
Despite the commercial disappointment, Grierson's review secured the film's legacy by giving the emerging genre its name.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) That classification is also the source of the controversies that surround the film today, since Flaherty worked before the rules of documentary filmmaking had been established. Posner argues that he is better understood as "a film poet, as opposed to a film documentarian".[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) The film has attracted postcolonial critique for its idealized portrait of an island community "unspoiled by the sham of civilisation", and scholar Margaret Jolly of the [Australian National University](https://www.edgepedia.org/australian-national-university) has examined its place, alongside Murnau's *Tabu* (1931), in the tension between ethnographic recuperation and romantic celebration of Polynesian women.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) • [10](https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol20/iss4/10/) In Samoa itself, Fonoti reports, the film is not considered controversial: most Samoans appreciate it as a snapshot into the past, and villagers interviewed in a 2011 documentary called it "our film" that "belongs to this village".[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster)
## Later history and restoration
A print survives in the [Museum of Modern Art](https://www.edgepedia.org/museum-of-modern-art) film archive, and this print was fully restored by [The Film Foundation](https://www.edgepedia.org/the-film-foundation), the organization founded in 1990 by director Martin Scorsese.[4](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/M/Moana1926.html) • [3](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography) Roughly half a century after the film first came out, Flaherty's daughter Monica Flaherty traveled back to Savai'i in 1975 alongside documentary maker Richard Leacock to capture a fresh soundtrack featuring genuine local sounds and speech in the area's dialect; the resulting synchronized cut, titled *Moana with Sound* from 1980 onward, was subsequently digitally restored by Bruce Posner with help from documentarian Sami van Ingen, Flaherty's great-grandson, and debuted at the [New York Film Festival](https://www.edgepedia.org/new-york-film-festival) in September 2014.[11](https://natlib.govt.nz/records/38188346?search%5Bi%5D%5Bcreator%5D=Paramount+Pictures+Corporation+%281914-1927%29&search%5Bpage%5D=1&search%5Bpath%5D=items&search%5Btext%5D=Documentary+films+--+Samoa) • [12](https://kinolorberbucket.s3.amazonaws.com/production/documents/MOANA_Pressbook.pdf) In 2016, New Zealand's Stout Research Centre and Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision hosted the country's first public premiere of the restored film, followed by a symposium with Pasifika filmmakers.[5](https://creativenz.govt.nz/news-and-blog/2022/06/15/02/24/51/moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926-film-symposium-with-pasifika-filmmakers-and-special-screening)
## Legacy and the Disney connection
Film historian Bruce Posner believes the 1926 film inspired Disney's 2016 animated *Moana* and its live-action remake: "Someone at Disney picked the bones of the 1926 Moana to make their movie", pointing to the shared Pacific Island setting and title, transposed from a male protagonist in Flaherty's film to a female one in the Disney franchise.[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster) Fonoti, who has served on Disney's Oceanic Story Trust advisory group since the franchise began, sees a significant link between the two: before *Moana*, several Disney productions had drawn on Indigenous cultures without consultation, whereas for *Moana* the company assembled experts from across the Pacific Islands to advise on all aspects of the film. In her view, "There is a thread that goes from the 1926 Moana to where we are now as active participants in crafting these stories."[6](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster)
## References
1. [Film Truth, Workforce LibreTexts (on Grierson's review)](https://workforce.libretexts.org/Workbench/Fim_Production_P8fgsGtaYP/07%3A_Film_Truth)
2. ["Visualizing the Past: Perestroika Documentary Memory", University of Pittsburgh dissertation](https://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/downloads/3f5a8da1-8762-42b1-be93-1df6f02758a6?locale=en)
3. [Moana (1926), AFI Catalog](https://catalog.afi.com/Film/10816-MOANA?cxt=filmography)
4. [Moana (1926), Progressive Silent Film List, Silent Era](https://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/M/Moana1926.html)
5. [Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age (1926 film) Symposium with Pasifika Filmmakers, Creative New Zealand](https://creativenz.govt.nz/news-and-blog/2022/06/15/02/24/51/moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926-film-symposium-with-pasifika-filmmakers-and-special-screening)
6. [The original Moana: did a 1926 documentary give birth to a 21st century Disney blockbuster?, The Guardian (30 June 2026)](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/jun/30/the-original-moana-did-a-1926-documentary-give-birth-to-a-21st-century-disney-blockbuster)
7. [Wrap Shot: Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age, American Society of Cinematographers](https://theasc.com/articles/wrap-shot-moana-a-romance-of-the-golden-age-1926)
8. [MOANA. A ROMANCE OF THE GOLDEN AGE [1926], Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision](https://www.ngataonga.org.nz/search-use-collection/search/F5296/)
9. [The original Moana looked very different to Disney's movies, Creative Bloq](https://www.creativebloq.com/entertainment/movies-tv-shows/the-original-moana-looked-very-different-to-disneys-movies-but-was-it-any-more-authentic)
10. [Jolly, Margaret (1997). "White Shadows in the Darkness: Representations of Polynesian Women in Early Cinema", Pacific Studies 20(4)](https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol20/iss4/10/)
11. [Moana with sound, National Library of New Zealand](https://natlib.govt.nz/records/38188346?search%5Bi%5D%5Bcreator%5D=Paramount+Pictures+Corporation+%281914-1927%29&search%5Bpage%5D=1&search%5Bpath%5D=items&search%5Btext%5D=Documentary+films+--+Samoa)
12. [MOANA WITH SOUND Pressbook, Kino Lorber](https://kinolorberbucket.s3.amazonaws.com/production/documents/MOANA_Pressbook.pdf)
13. [unseen-cinema.com](https://www.unseen-cinema.com/files/art/MOANAPressRelease.pdf)
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*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Documentary and biographical films › Documentary films by subject: people, identity, and communities*
*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*
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