Results for Arts & Entertainment

Showko Showfukutei provided a good laugh when she performed Rakugo, a Japanese traditional comedy with some modern characters, and ventriloquism, when visiting Tonga on August 14-17.

A three-days Tonga Secondary Schools Brass Band Music Festival concluded with a brass band marching contest in Nuku'alofa on Friday, August 10. The winners will be announced tonight at the Queen Salote Memorial Hall.

Tonga's annual Heilala Festival begins in Nuku'alofa on June 25 to Friday July 6, including the 2018 Miss Heilala Pageant.

A film documentary, 'Leitis in Waiting', has won the audience award, after premiering at the Festival of Commonwealth Film 2018 in London. The film promotes human rights and challenges laws ciminalizing LGBT lives, still current in eight Pacific countries.

A feature documentary ‘Leitis in Waiting’, about Joey Mataele and the Tonga Leitis, a transgender minority group fighting for equality, will premiere at the Festival of Commonwealth Film at the British Museum in London on 14-15 April.

Five Tongan sisters from Hawaii – Alexsia (19), Tiueti (16), Lela (15), Elisiva (14) and Nini (10) – were guests on America’s popular Ellen Degeneres Show yesterday, where the singers each received a cheque of $10,000 USD. The group are all daughters of Walter and Telesia Tonga, who immigrated from Tonga to Hawaii.

Tonga will host the 2018 Miss Pacific Islands pageant, which is usually held around the first week of December.

Traditional dances were performed by young students from various Government Primary Schools in the Nuku'alofa district on November 22, to promote and preserve Tonga's traditional dances.

Story telling through the modern medium of film allows different islander voices to be heard together, Sisi'uno Helu, told the audience at the opening of the Nuku'alofa Film Festival last night. While Oceania cultures are often seen as being rigidly conservative, the festival offers two more nights of films that show these cultures are not inflexible.