GUAM-BASED production company Nihi Indigenous Media has concluded videography for “Marianas Cousins” on Rota, project director Cara Flores said, adding that they are now headed to Tinian.
Nihi Indigenous Media is filming “Marianas Cousins,” a webshow set to launch online this summer.
The series will be about a “child from each island [showing] us their island from their eyes and their activities,” Flores said.
For most of April the production crew was on Saipan. They traveled to Rota on the 27th and finished videography there Monday.
Isaiah Taimanao, a Sinapalo Elementary School student, is the star of the Rota segment.
He said filming his island has been enjoyable.
“It’s fun,” Taimanao said. “I get to show you some of the best places,” which include the Rota Swimming Hole, his grandparents’ farm, and the famous giant trongkon nunu or banyan tree.
In a previous interview, Flores said “Marianas Cousins” is about forming connections between the islands of the archipelago and encouraging reconnections to “land and to the values” of the Chamorro people.
Tillie Taimanao, Isaiah’s mother, said she raises her son according to tradition.
“The way I raise Isaiah is the way that my parents raised me up,” Tillie Taimanao added. “[Knowing] his family, respecting our manamko’, and learning the culture so that he knows who he is and can always come back to his roots.”
Isaiah Taimanao in the Luta episode of the Marianas Cousins webshow.
