The Moken believe their way of life sprung from a curse cast upon them when an island queen caught her husband sleeping with her sister. Their lot is to live as gypsies upon the water, traveling from island to island near Burma and Thailand surviving both off of and like fish.
Director Olivia Wyatt reveals their history/myth in Sailing a Sinking Sea by bathing the screen in the gurgles and dreamy visuals of the sea.
Don’t expect de rigueur documentary talking heads. Instead, Sailing a Sinking Sea employs voiceover narration by tribe members paired with English subtitles to do the talking as scratchy images and soothing waves sweep over the audience, stopping here and there on a family diving for dinner or smoking a pipe on their narrow boats. Wyatt gained incredible access and presents a compelling ethnographic tale of these mostly contented water people, their culture and history.
The film only hints at the bigger issue: the not-so-slow fading of this culture. After the film’s premiere, Wyatt spoke of tourists poking into the Moken’s world and government efforts to restrict their freedom to fish.
Sailing a Sinking Sea
Visions, World Premiere
Thursday, March 19, 9:30pm, Violet Crown
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This article appears in March 13 • 2015.