Students and staff of Robert Louis Stevenson Secondary School watched the most talked-about Samoan feature film, ‘Three Wise Cousins’ on Tuesday.

Principal Masa Fa’asau said the idea of a movie day to watch the culturally-rich feature film was brought up by the school’s English department.

“Our English department has a media section for year 12’s and 13’s and thought it was a good idea to take the students,” Ms. Fa’asau said.

“So when the proposal was brought to me I approved it along with the Board especially since the movie can teach the students important aspects of our culture.”

Ms. Fa’asau felt that the message of the movie touched many of the students because they could relate to it.

“I think this is the reason why the children found it so interesting,” Ms. Fa’asau said.

“These are the problems the kids are going through at this time and age.”

Besides the great humour, the message of the movie got a 10 out of 10 from Ms. Fa’asau.

“It was a great movie, very nice story line, funny and easy to relate to. Movies like these are really needed for this generation,” Ms. Fa’asau said.

“The movie is good and shows the present generation where they lack in cultural knowledge and respect for their traditions.”

Ms. Fa’asau said after the movie, the teachers asked for more educational movies such as the ‘Three Wise Cousins’.

For Head Boy Vensel Margraff, the movie brought to light many cultural messages and taught him valuable life lessons.

“My thoughts about the movie is that it had a deep cultural message inside,” Mr. Margraff said.

“There were many morals such as family should be our first priority and also women are the stronghold of each family.”

He said he thought the movie was a perfect balance of humour and cultural richness and the Samoan culture was perfectly promoted on the global stage which benefits our country greatly.

“It will add to our reputation as a paradise state but also spreads the purity of our culture to the people overseas.”

“The movie was great, it was filled with humour, a hidden moral message that I believe touched every student that attended the movie day, the movie was simply 100%.”

As for head girl Christine Peters, she picked up on her own personal set of hidden messages.

“There were so many lessons in the movie - like money doesn’t grow on trees and you have to be grateful for what we have,” Ms. Peters said.

“It really showed us how hard the life is for everyday Samoans and it showed a lot of areas within our culture that our generation need to know about.”

She was surprised after hearing of the limited budget that Director Stallone Ioasa was faced with and how he still made a great movie promoting Samoa.

“The way the director made his $80,000 budget work and produce such a successful movie baffles me,” Ms. Peters said.

“The Samoan culture was promoted greatly and it taught us so much.”

Even Valentine Parker who is a Form 2 freshman learnt important lessons.

“The biggest lesson I learnt was to always respect your parents and always help them out in times of need,” Valentine said.

The school is now motivated to offer practical lessons involving more cultural activities in the near future.

“We have Samoan classes here and the movie motivated our teachers to include more cultural activities and to learn how things are done the Samoan way,” Ms. Peters said.