Solrun Hoaas

[Quentin Turnour]

It may only be meaningful to a few list members, but I should regretfully 
let you know of the sudden death in Melbourne of the film-maker and 
artists Solrun Hoaas, aged 66. 

Although born in Norway to Lutheran missionary parents and having lived 
the last 25 years in Australia, Solrun had strong links with Japan and 
Korea. Her childhood was spent in China, and after 1949 in Kobe. Although 
majoring in anthropology at the University of Oslo, she returned to Japan 
to do post-graduate studies at Kyoto and lived there with her then 
husband, the American playwright and director Roger Pulvers (another 
long-time Japanese resident) until both moved to Australia in the mid 
1970s. 

She spent long periods filming on Hatoma Island in Okinawa in the late 
1970s and early 80s, resulting in the series including Waiting for Water, 
There’s Nothing that Doesn’t Take Time, The Priestess/the Storekeeper and 
Sacred Vandals.

Solrun's documentaries of the late 1980s frequently dealt with the 
Australian-Japanese conection, including her look at the Japanese brides 
of the Australians soldiers serving in the BCOF occupation force in Kure 
in the late 1940s, Green Tea and Cherry Ripe (1988). Her only feature 
film, the Japanese-Australian co-pro Aya (1990), starring Australian 
Nicholas Eadie and Eri Ishida, dealt with similar issues.

In the early 1990s, Solrun was able to gain access and film in North 
Korea, resulting in the diary film Pyongyang Diary(1997) and also Rushing 
to Sunshine (2001).

Her films are distributed by Ronin Films In Australia, with Icarus in the 
US also distributing some titles.

Quentin Turnour, Programmer, 
National Film and Sound Archive, Australia
McCoy Circuit, Acton, 
ACT, 2601 AUSTRALIA
phone: +61 2 6248 2054  |  fax: + 61 2 6249 8159
www.nfsa.gov.au





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