Raroia - The Paradise Island

In the early sixties the Swedish director Torgny Anderberg, together with the Swedish anthropologist and Polynesia expert Bengt Danielsson, shot a film on the coral island Raroia: VILLERVALLE I SÖDERHAVET. Back then this location, visited for the first time by Danielsson as early as 1947, was considered one of the most heavenly spots in the South Pacific. Anderberg‘s documentary RAROIA - THE PARADISE ISLAND, for which Danielsson was again consulted, shows how the nuclear tests De Gaulle had carried out in French Polynesia since 1968 have put a drastic end to that paradisiacal situation. Images from the past contrast sharply with pictures of what it is like today. Whereas in the early sixties Raroia‘s pearl diver Tetohu was still happily frisking around in an azure sea, he is now pining away in the slums of Tahiti, embittered at the French authorities, who had promised the islanders a beautiful future.