NZ strongman film aims to inspire Pasifika youth

NEW ZEALAND – A new film about a New Zealand-born Samoan strongman is aimed at inspiring Pasifika youth to dream big and work hard to achieve their goals.

Better known as the ‘Mitre 10 Mega Man’, Levi Vaoga spent a decade pulling trucks and flipping tractor tyres for the hardware franchise promoting the message “big is good.”

But as the New Zealand-born Cook Islands filmmaker Jamie Aureka Maoate Dunn discovers in “The Life I’ve Lived,” there is more to Levi Vaoga than meets the eye.

Radio New Zealand’s Koroi Hawkins spoke with Jamie Dunn about the film.

“I’ve always been into inspirational videos and documentaries and I have actually competed in strongman events myself so I kind of know the sport of strongman has kind of faded in New Zealand.

“I got to meet Levi through my time on training with strong man and competing. I actually had no idea that, I only remembered him as the guy from Mitre 10 Mega, the guy who did ‘big is good’ but I had no idea that he competed on the world’s strongest man stage 11 times”.

KOROI HAWKINS: That is quite amazing yeah. I’ve watched bits and pieces of the film and it seems a very honest account of a person who has gone through a lot to achieve what he wants to achieve so it’s quite a story in that sense.

“Yeah exactly. He’s really humble about everything and he’s just a guy who, you know, I wanted to do this documentary because after doing a couple of training sessions with him, all I wanted to do was give this guy recognition for what he should be known for.

KH: You were saying in the first world strongman tournament he went to there wasn’t anyone who could train him because he was the first one in New Zealand to actually do the sport.

“Yeah, he did everything all by himself only having the help of his two best friends and the support from his family.

KH: And there’s a deeper story about his time as a farmhand and sleeping on sacks of manure that he was selling to fund his tournaments, what was that about?

“He got laid off work and was trying to find a job and all that kind of stuff because everyone’s got bills to pay.

“But his friend Freddy who’s in the documentary, believed in him from day one and that he could go places with strongman and there was a competition in Te Puke so they hopped straight in the van.

“Aand being a typical kiwi as he is, he said ‘we’ll sell bags of sheep shit to make our way’. So they pretty much travelled for a year or two, living in a van and just bagging up sheep shit just to make enough money to travel to the next competition where they’d go and win it and make about $300.

“So that’s pretty much how it all started for him. They just travelled the whole of New Zealand going to local strongman competitions and A&P shows and from there he got an invitation to Australasia’s strongest man and from there he went to the Worlds.

KH: And it’s also a story about perseverance and towards the end of the film it starts to crank up to what his life means and to people around him as well, what do you think of it in terms of a Pasifika perspective in terms of overcoming challenges?

“All I want this to do is inspire the younger generation to be honest. It shows that anything is possible if you just put your mind to it, that’s the main purpose, because he even states in the documentary it doesn’t matter if it’s not strongman, if you put your mind to absolutely anything you will achieve it.”

- RNZI