He was working as a taro farmer and carpenter when he was approached by director Tusi Tamasese, who offered him the lead part -that of dwarf farmer Saili- in what was to be Samoa's first ever feature film, The Orator (2011).
The film was nominated as Best Picture at the 2012 New Zealand Film Awards losing out to the Orator.
The West Australian wrote: "The Orator is a fascinating journey into Samoan life, but the slow pace of this way of life does make for a slow-paced film. There are lots of scenes where Saili is shown deep in thought, or his wife Vaaiga is sitting weaving the mats that are a major cultural occupation. The Orator does have its dramatic highpoints and the verbal-jousting conclusion is well staged by the cast of Samoans, who were drawn from the villages on Upolu".
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:"Thanks in large part to the almost edibly gorgeous cinematography of Leon Narbey, the film is a sumptuously moody visual experience: the opening shot, of rain on a mountain, might have been painted by McCahon; water runs mercury-silver off taro leaves; tiny details like a snail on a gravestone are lingered over lovingly.
Orator | orator | The Orator | ''El Bautista o el Orador'' (The Baptist or the Orator). Bronze statue at the Madrid Atocha railway station |
He recently completed the Oxford Text of the orator Lysias.
This appointment prevented his accompanying the expedition to Egypt, where his patron was killed; but his activity and real merit soon won him a powerful friend in the influential General Henry Fox, the brother of the orator, and at this time governor and commander-in-chief in Minorca.
Whether the Canutius spoken of by Tacitus in his Dialogus de Oratoribus refers to Tiberius, or to the orator Publius Canutius, or a different person altogether, is quite uncertain.