Pele Hehea says her dad didn’t migrate from Tonga to Australia, working in jobs no one else wanted, just so she could become a storyteller. But that’s exactly what happened.
“He came here so I could be an accountant apparently – but I’d be a terrible accountant,” Hehea laughs.
Her love of film can be traced back to her grandmother, who was a massive movie buff – they watched a lot of films together. The family managed to get a Super 8 camera and when she was about six, she wrote and made her first film. One was about an evil cat kidnapping a princess – a dog saved the day.
“I wasn’t allowed to touch the camera. I’m still not allowed to touch the camera, which is quite funny. It was all my toys on play equipment. My mum was in it and I operated all the toys and because it was such an old camera, there was no audio. So, I made it like a silent film.”
As Hehea got older, she briefly entertained a career “ruling the world” while attending a selective high school in Sydney.
“We were taught that we were the future world leaders and did the highest-level English, legal studies, geography, intended to work with the UN and all that sort of stuff. And at some point, in high school I realised how much bureaucracy is involved in that kind of level of governing and how I’m impotent. It just made me really frustrated.”
She then went to Sydney University and ended up in a film theory course. She was on a path to something creative. She tried fashion retail – looking after six stores, creating look books and styling notes for each season, but she wasn’t enjoying the job.
Then her Dad died and that became a catalyst for change.
“You can suddenly be plunged into sadness by something completely out of your control, so why deliberately stay in a situation which makes you unhappy.”
Hehea was dating a director at the time and he encouraged her to contact AFTRS to see if they needed any volunteers for the art department. After a day, they asked her back to work on student films regularly.
She then did some short courses at AFTRS and NIDA and was contemplating a full-time design course, however the head of design at NIDA at the time advised her: “Oh no honey, you’re already a designer. Throw your hat into the ring.”
Long story short. She did just that – working on short films, TVCs, TV series and feature films. Word of mouth referrals kept her busy.
Today, Hehea’s credit list is long – including Black Comedy, Move it Mob Style, Here Out West, Born to Spy, Bump, A Royal In Paradise, Year Of, Anyone But You, Housos, and recreations for Dani Laidley documentary Two Tribes.
Her first gig as an HOD was on a short film and unpaid. She heard the she got the job just as she was about to start her restaurant shift which paid her rent.
“I was ecstatic. They weren’t paying me, but someone had actually contacted me directly to do this. And it felt amazing. It was starting to be real, and then I could maybe put away the jobs that you do to live.”
Her latest project was Carmen and Bolude – director Maria Isabel de la Ossa’s feature debut – which follows the titular characters on a journey from Harlem, New York to Sydney, where they have ten days to collect 100 ‘welcomes’ so that Bolude’s traditional Nigerian father will agree to let her marry an Australian.
It was a film Hehea describes as her ‘happy place’.
“I’m very big on representation in front of the camera and behind the camera. I think I tend to get hired more productions which have more people of colour, more indigenous representation. I’m very good at dressing non-traditional, standard Anglo-Saxon bodies. My body.”
Her one-time dream of changing the world?
“I remember one of the producers [on Move It Mob Style] saying to me, ‘I’m so glad that you’re here as well, because they see you behind the camera. They see you here’. And for a long time, I was the only brown person behind the camera a lot of the time. And they go, ‘I can do this. Maybe this is a world that I can inhabit.’
“I want to create space for people who ordinarily wouldn’t have access to a career in the arts, allow them to dream bigger and to believe that their voices are not only valid, but also valued.”
Denise Eriksen is co-founder (with Esther Coleman Hawkins) of Media Mentors Australia.
The company is rolling out across Australia management and leadership training for early career HODs or 2ICs ready to take the next step in their careers. There is a session this Saturday February 11 in Sydney, location TBC. It is also running the Set Educated program for those interested in screen industry jobs, with an upcoming session at NIDA this Saturday February 10 and February 24 in Western Sydney at ACE, with Pele Hehea to be in attendance.