Lights, phone camera, action! Capturing life and humor in Majuro

Microwaves By Jack Niedenthal

Making films in the Marshall Islands is an exercise in faith—faith that the tide will cooperate, that the rain will hold off, that a boat will start when it needs to start, that actors will show up wearing the right outfit, and that a story spoken in Marshallese, but subtitled in English with its local nuance and humor, will still travel beyond the reef and reach people who have never set foot in our country.

I did not come to filmmaking through an industry pipeline. I came to it the way many things happen here in the islands: by noticing an absence that felt unacceptable and realizing that if we waited for outside solutions, we would wait forever.

Our early approach to guerrilla filmmaking was never romantic. The micro-budget DIY method was not an artistic choice; it was the only realistic one. We started with whatever equipment we could assemble—first a standard-definition prosumer camera, ambient light, one boom microphone and a lot of self-taught editing in Final Cut Pro. In other places, that might be a starter kit. In the Marshall Islands, it can be the entire production infrastructure.

People often assume the biggest obstacle is money, but the real daily challenge is logistics. Filming even a short scene can involve finding actors and crew from across the island, watching tides and wind, arranging transport and hoping that when we arrive, we can use the house or store as a set. A five-minute scene can consume an entire day before the camera even rolls.

In Majuro, production never happens outside of life; it sits inside life. Our actors often just wear their own clothes. The houses and streets are not “locations” in the Hollywood sense; they are places where people live. Children wander through the background, radios play nearby and neighbors drop in during a scene.

In this new, AI-driven world, authenticity gives our films an all-important texture, but it also creates friction. Sound alone can be a battle. You can write a scene that requires quiet, but the island might deliver a generator starting next door, a passing truck, a sudden gust of wind, or a rooster or barking dog with perfect timing.

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Geography adds another layer of complexity. The Marshall Islands is a country built on water and distance. When a story moves to another island, production logistics change completely. Boats, fuel, weather windows, tides and schedules suddenly become the real producers of the film.

WhenSuzanne Chutaro, then co-producer and co-director, and I made “The Sound of Crickets at Night,” a story tied to the Bikinians’ forced relocation, the technical and logistical demands multiplied. We were working with a state-of-the-art camera, pushing ourselves technically and trying to broaden the audience by adding more English dialogue and foreign characters. Every artistic decision created practical problems that had to be solved with patience and improvisation.

Working with nonprofessional actors has always been central to our films and is one of our strengths. Local performers carry a kind of authenticity that trained acting can sometimes polish away. I have always wanted children to appear prominently in my stories because so much of the Marshallese population is young, and they deserve to see their own world reflected on screen. But directing non-actors requires patience, especially when they are children. A director often becomes a translator—translating the script into something natural for the performer, then helping them repeat the moment until the camera captures it without the performance becoming stiff.

For many years, our focus was on longer narrative films—feature-length productions shot with sophisticated cameras and sound equipment designed for festival screenings. Those films helped establish that Marshallese stories could exist in the international film world. But technology and audiences change, and storytelling formats change with them.

In recent years, Microwave Films has shifted away from 90-minute feature films toward shorter episodic storytelling. Working with fellow local producer Corrieography, we began experimenting with this new format. Using iPhones as our primary cameras, we created what became the first Marshallese comedy sitcom, “Majuro 5-Oh.” The series follows the adventures of a happy-go-lucky detective, Rajah Lord (Roger Muller), and his boss MK (Save Filemoni) as they navigate everyday life in Majuro with humor that is unmistakably local. Each roughly 30-minute episode is released directly on YouTube, commercial-free and bypassing the traditional film-festival circuit.

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This shift has changed more than just the equipment; it has changed the rhythm of filmmaking. Shooting with iPhones allows us to move quickly, adapt to real locations and film scenes without the same technical setup required by larger cameras. “Majuro 5-Oh” now has three completed episodes, and the response has been encouraging (over 200,000 views at this writing) because our people are able to recognize their own lives, jokes and situations on screen.

The move from feature films to smartphone-shot episodic comedy might sound like a technological step backward, but in many ways, it is the opposite. It reflects how most young audiences watch stories today. Online platforms like YouTube have become the most accessible theaters for Pacific audiences. Instead of waiting for occasional festival screenings in a single location, viewers can watch our Marshallese stories whenever and wherever they want. The tools have become smaller and cheaper, but the potential audience has become larger. Indeed, well over 50 percent of our views are now on cell phones, almost twice as many as people watching on TV.

At the same time, the deeper creative challenge remains: telling Marshallese stories in a way that stays authentic while still connecting with people outside the islands. For years, our primary audience was our own community, which allowed our films to be filled with local humor, references and cultural nuance. When those stories travel abroad, we must build bridges without losing sight of where they come from. The Marshall Islands is not just a backdrop. It is a worldview. Our stories emerge from real places—homes, docks, stores and alleyways—where dignity and hardship exist side by side.

Recognition has helped confirm that these efforts matter. One of the proudest moments for Microwave Films was having our work featured in the 2019 Queensland Art Museum Gallery of Modern Art’s Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. For a small country with a small market, that recognition shows that Pacific island voices belong in the larger cultural conversation.

But the real reason for continuing this work has never changed. Children in the Marshall Islands should grow up seeing films in their own language, set in their own country and dealing with issues that belong to them. Whether those stories appear as ninety-minute films shown at festivals or 30-minute sitcom episodes shot on an iPhone and released on YouTube, the purpose is the same: to show that Marshallese life is worthy of being seen on screen.

Everything difficult about making films here—the weather, the logistics, the limited equipment, the scarcity of money—becomes worthwhile when someone recognizes themselves in a story. That recognition is the quiet revolution of Marshallese filmmaking. It does not require studios, large budgets, or permission from outside industries. It only requires the determination to keep telling our stories in our own language, on our own islands, with the people who live those stories every day.

Jack Niedenthal is the former secretary of Health Services for the Marshall Islands, where he has lived and worked for 43 years. He is the author of “For the Good of Mankind, An Oral History of the People of Bikini,” and president of Microwave Films, which has produced six award-winning feature films in the Marshallese language. Send feedback to jackniedenthal@gmail.com