You could see the passion of the women in the film and their overwhelming desire to complete the project which was estimated to take three months but became three years.

During the launch of the film at the Port Moresby Arts Theatre I had the opportunity to hear the director, Julia Mageau Gray, speak.

She said while tattooing has a strong following today, the traditional practice is in decline and the film represents an avenue to help people understand and embrace the once popular art.

“It was out of frustration and deep sadness,” Julia said. “I live in Australia and I had this outside perspective. I come home and I see my cousins and they seem to be aspiring to be us, sort of like the grass is greener sort of thing.”

She became more driven to succeed because she married a Maori man and saw the tattooing revival first hand in New Zealand.

“I realised that their groups moved from texture and paint to the real thing, and there’s this massive tattoo revival.

“A lot of women were doing it as well and I couldn’t understand why we weren’t practicing it anymore.”

Julia – whose heritage is from Oaisaka Village, Mekeo - found out that her grandmother was the last to be tattooed in the Mekeo design.

“All the Mekeo designs are gone. The ones you see them now are from the Roro people of the coast,” she said.

In the film, an elderly women from Hula said she had her tattoos from the “dark ages” - referring to the time before missionary contact.

Julia said all the older women they asked confirmed traditional tattooing went out of favour because of missionary influence.

“My mother was not tattooed because she was one of the first women to win a scholarship to go and study in Australia.

“Because of missionary influence the tattooing stopped; it was deemed an unnecessary tradition. I don’t think they understood what the role it actually played, that it empowered our women.

“Now it’s a massive challenge, it lost its importance,” Julia said in the film.

After being in her village, Julia and her three colleagues - two from Gabagaba and Australia, Paia Ingram and Ranu James, along with Natalie Richards from Raikau, Hula and Australia - went to Samoa where they were tattooed using the traditional tapping method by the Sulu'ape family.

They went there because Samoans were amongst the missionaries who came to PNG in the past and the women were in search of answers.

“For Melanesia, it’s a women’s practice but mostly it’s a men’s practice,” Julia said. “It comes down to the dominant sex and that’s men, so I see that’s why we are not tattooing.

“For us women, to bring back our tattooing practice means we need to have more of a voice in society.”

Julia is now tattooing both men and women. “I am passionate about reinvigorating our women’s tattoo designs. Men can wear our bubu's tattoos as well.”

Julia said she is a contemporary artist with the motto “from old to new old”. She added that, in the past, it was different but now people are more flexible

“The person that gets got tattooed didn’t choose the design and where it went; it was the tattooist’s job to say ‘this is your story’.

“That’s what the rest of Polynesia was doing, they took the person, looked at their history, their genealogy and they designed a tattoo for that particular person.

“Now women can decide their designs and we compromise the placement,” Julia said.