Flying Fox in a Freedom Tree (1989)

Pepe is a young Samoan. He has two mentors, who represents two opposite paths. One is Toasa, the senior chief of Pepe's village, an elder powerful and wise in the ancient way of his people. He is Pepe's 'conscience'. The other is Tagata, the city-bred dwarf, street smart, bold and cheeky, but condemned by his stature to be an oddity, a flying fox 'with an eagle in the gut'. Tagata is Pepe's 'other' side. Pepe sees his life as a constant set of choices, personified in both Toasa and Tagata; tradition and modernity, rural and urban, communal and individual. Torn between this paradox, he embarks on a life of defiance against his father's unholy trinity of 'God, Money, and Success' only to find that the precepts and responsibilities Toasa had taught him are impossible to practise.