{"id":410,"date":"2014-09-05T10:41:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-05T10:41:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/wordpress_media\/?page_id=410"},"modified":"2025-10-25T17:42:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T17:42:24","slug":"coming-home-to-banaba","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=410","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Coming Home to Banaba&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<h4><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-393 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard.jpeg\" alt=\"webpostcard\" width=\"432\" height=\"326\" srcset=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard.jpeg 432w, https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard-300x226.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard-260x196.jpeg 260w, https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard-160x120.jpeg 160w, https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard-386x290.jpeg 386w, https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard-290x218.jpeg 290w, https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/wp-content\/uploads\/webpostcard-193x145.jpeg 193w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 432px) 100vw, 432px\" \/><\/h4>\n<h4><a href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=377\">Banaba<\/a> &#8211; &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=410\">Coming Home to Banaba&#8221;<\/a> &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=417\">Images and quotes<\/a> &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=442\">Transcript<\/a> &#8211;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=448\">The Making of &#8230;<\/a><\/h4>\n<h3>The TV Programme<\/h3>\n<p>This TV 30&#8242; documentary was first broadcast in the UK on the BBC2 national network on Friday, August 21st 1998 as part of the Open University course &#8220;Pacific Studies&#8221;. It was broadcast at least once per year until the Open University ceased broadcasting course-related programmes in January 2007.<\/p>\n<p><em>Coming Home to Banaba<\/em>\u00a0was screened at the 6th International Festival of Ethnographic Film at Goldsmiths College, University of London, on September 19th 1998.<\/p>\n<p>The Gilbertese\/Banaban language version has been widely viewed in Banaban and academic circles, and is available to view online.<\/p>\n<h3>Watch the programme<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/386724534\/8b497a7566\">Coming Home to Banaba<\/a> (original English language version)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/386729091\/533a7b3ed7\">Okiran Mwengara ae Banaba<\/a> (Gilbertese\/Banaban language version: produced by me and distributed for non-broadcast, non-commercial use under licence from the Open University)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>The Background<\/h3>\n<p>Banaba is a remote and tiny island in the Pacific Ocean, about 50-miles South of the Equator, at the Western limit of the Republic of Kiribati.<\/p>\n<p>Once it was known as Ocean Island, named after ship that &#8220;discovered&#8221; it. Once it was the colonial capital of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, and one of the British Empire&#8217;s richest sources of phosphate, the raw material for the fertiliser that enriched the soil of Australia and New Zealand.<\/p>\n<p>From 1900 to 1979, phosphate mining devastated Banaba, leaving a landscape of barren coral outcrops and rusting machinery.<\/p>\n<p>Most Banabans now live in Fiji, two thousand miles away from Banaba, on Rabi Island (pronounced &#8216;Rambi&#8217;) to which the British exiled them in 1945, after three years of intense suffering under Japanese occupation.<\/p>\n<p>In July 1997, a small group of Banabans and ex-miners made a return journey to the island that was once their home.<\/p>\n<p>This 30-minute TV documentary tells the story.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a title=\"Images and quotes\" href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=417\">Images and quotes from the programme<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"Programme transcript\" href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=442\">Programme Transcript<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a title=\"The Making of \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcComing Home to Banaba\u00e2\u20ac\u2122\" href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=448\">The Making of <em>Coming Home to Banaba<\/em><\/a>. The programme was shot on a relatively low budget, using DVCAM format cameras (for the first time on location by a BBC-OUPC crew) by a team of two: this account provides more information how it was done, and how the programme idea developed.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=1199\">Alan and Jeremy do the South Pacific <\/a>&#8211; prepared for Alan Marlow&#8217;s retirement party, August 2020<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em><strong>Coming Home to Banaba<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<div align=\"left\">\n<p>was produced by BBC Television for The Open University<br \/>\nas a component of the Open University course &#8220;D332 Pacific Studies&#8221;, which is no longer offered.<\/p>\n<h2>Production Credits<\/h2>\n<p><em>Cameras and Sound<\/em><br \/>\nAlan Marlow and Jeremy Cooper<\/p>\n<p><em>Dubbing Mixer<\/em><br \/>\nMartin Tillman<\/p>\n<p><em>Off-Line Video Editor<\/em><br \/>\nDenise Taylor<\/p>\n<p><em>Written and produced by<\/em><br \/>\nJeremy Cooper<br \/>\n+44 (0) 7481 530305<br \/>\n<a href=\"mailto:jeremy@oliomedia.co.uk\">jeremy@oliomedia.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 The Open University 1998<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Banaba &#8211; &#8220;Coming Home to Banaba&#8221; &#8211;\u00a0Images and quotes &#8211;\u00a0Transcript &#8211;\u00a0The Making of &#8230; The TV Programme This TV 30&#8242; documentary was first broadcast in the UK on the BBC2 national network on Friday, August 21st 1998 as part of &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/?page_id=410\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">&#8216;Coming Home to Banaba&#8217;<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-410","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=410"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1608,"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/410\/revisions\/1608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olioweb.me.uk\/oliomedia\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}