HAWAII AWARD WINNERS AND A STANDOUT WORK

The Hawaii International Film Festival fittingly wrapped up its 31^st edition last week with Alexander Payne’s Hawaii-set-and-shot comedy/drama The Descendants, with a gracious Payne in town for the screening (no George Clooney, alas, though a life-sized Clooney cardboard cut-out was certainly a massive hit in the lobby). “Wine always tastes the best in the region it was grown and made,” noted Payne to an appreciative audience. “I hope that this film plays best in Hawaii.”

Judging from audience response, Payne got his wish; the film (to be released nationally November 15) won the festival’s Audience Award for Narrative Feature, with many viewers praising its respectful take on author Kaui Hart Hemming’s source novel, as well as its catchy all-Hawaiian soundtrack. Taking the Audience Award for Documentary Feature was Aloha Buddha, Bill Ferehawk and Dylan Robertson’s fascinating look at the complicated history and unique present of Japanese Buddhism in Hawaii, while the Audience Award for Best Short went to Mitsuyo Miyazaki’s slick Tsuyako, involving a love affair between two women in post-war Japan.

Earlier that week, in the restored 19^th-century glamour of the Hawaii’s Governor’s Mansion, festival staff, guests, and press gathered for the announcement of the jury awards. Prashant Bhargava’s Patang (The Kite), a tale of family secrets revealed and denied during the extraordinary kite festival of Ahmedabad, India, took the “Halekulani Golden Orchid Award” for Narrative Feature; its vibrant Super-8 footage of the festival and its organic feel for the city itself turned what could have been a familiar melodrama into a rich exploration of place and spectacle.

Earning the award for Documentary Feature was Adam Pesce’s Splinters (pictured above), deceptively clad as a surfing film about the sport’s rise in Papua New Guineau but more pointedly an engrossing, endlessly surprising examination of social hierarchies, clan rivalries, and economic and cultural change within the region. In recent years a wave of sports films set in unusual locations have appeared at festivals—Skateistan, about skaters in Kabul, for instance, or God Went Surfing With the … Read the rest

HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Jason Sanders

The 29th edition of the Hawaii International Film Festival (Oct. 15-25) kicked off with its usual blend of sun-kissed island charm and formal glamour; a sunset opening party at the historic Royal Hawaiian Hotel, steps from the beaches of Waikiki, seemed like some stage-managed idea of what “the good life” should be, with tiki lights flickering in the warm breezes, views of a sun setting along the beach, the tinkling of wine glasses, great food, jovial filmmakers, various Lost cast members mingling with Hawaiian artists, mainland stars, Korean producers, Japanese directors, and more. “Only in a place like Hawaii could all these different people come together,” mentioned more than one observer. Unfortunately, another conversation was also taking place, one that echoed a growing uncertainty for many in the Hawaiian film community: after many years of service, the Hawaii Film Office, which assists visiting filmmakers, television crews, and production teams in navigating the island’s physical and bureaucratic landscapes, was facing budget cuts that would leave it either completely shut down or severely limited. [At press time, it was announced that while it would still remain open, only two staff members would retain their jobs.]

With over $146 million spent in Hawaii by film and television productions last year (and with even more millions undoubtedly spent by tourists eager to visit the sites they had seen in those films and television shows), the decision to lay off the trained staff who help those productions (and make sure they return) was the main topic of conversation among local audiences and filmmakers. Paradoxically, this year’s festival, led again by main programmer Anderson Le and executive director Chuck Boller, served up possibly its strongest ever line-up of local films, with a successful feature (Marc Forby’s Barbarian Princess, which nabbed the Audience Award and which was discussed on our Festival Ambassador Blog), skillful documentaries (especially Anne Misawa’s State of Aloha; Tom Coffman’s Ninoy and the Rise of People Power, and Marleen Booth’s Pidgin: The Voice of Hawaii), a collection of great shorts (including, but not limited to, Brent Anbe’s Ajumma! Are … Read the rest

WHAT’S IN A NAME: BARBARIAN PRINCESS BEGINS FIRST WEEKEND OF HIFF

For the past several weeks the Hawaiian film community and Native Hawaiian activists have been abuzz about Barbarian Princess, British director Mark Forby’s new film on Princess Kai’ulani, one of Hawaii’s most revered historical figures whose tragic life story—sent into exile in England as a teenager, she became an international voice against the American-business-led coup that virtually overthrew the Hawaiian government in the 1890’s, and returned to Hawaii to protect her people’s rights, but died tragically at the age of 23—is indeed the stuff of cinema. Last Friday, on the second day of the Hawaii International Film Festival and the anniversary of Kai’ulani’s birth, audiences finally got a chance to see the film for themselves.

Debate had already been raging as to the film’s casting of a non-Native Hawaiian actress as the princess (Q’orianka Kilcher, The New World, who is half-indigenous Peruvian and actually grew up in Hawaii) and especially its rather spurious title, which is defended as “ironic” by its producers, who insist that it references 19th century American newspaper headlines about the princess, and is meant to be ultimately undermined by the reality of her as an elegant, proud, well-spoken woman. “The title Barbarian Princess is intended as an ironic juxtaposition meant to capture the interest of people who know nothing about the history of Hawaii,” noted one producer in an attempt to defuse the situation. “What moviegoers around the world will learn from this film is that Princess Ka`iulani was an intelligent, beautiful and powerful defender of the Kingdom of Hawaii.” At the festival’s opening press conference, Forby fended off one pointed question by stating “the title was meant to bring in, and then challenge audiences from, say, middle America who might be expecting something like sexy dances at a luau.”

Others, however, are less than thrilled with having one of their most beloved historical figures (streets, schools, and other institutions are named after the princess in Honolulu alone) being referred to yet again as a “barbarian,” even if it is ironic. “It is a perpetuation of the wrongs and hurtful aspersions … Read the rest

HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL By Jason Sanders

The Louis Vuitton Hawaii International Film Festival (Oct. 9-19) prides itself on being a bridge between “East and West,” but this year’s edition found its greatest strength in films even closer to home (or as close to home as Hawaii can get, considering it’s the most geographically isolated populated landmass in the world). Festival programmer Anderson Le and director Chuck Boller brought in the usual dizzying array of films and filmmakers from around the Pacific Rim, with Chinese melodramas, Japanese comedies, and Korean thrillers among the many choices on offer this year, but also spotlighted low-budget works from Hawaii and other Pacific Islands, including the first feature films ever from Guam and the Marshall Islands. No longer content to be a mere “bridge” between East and West, this year’s festival promised to highlight the Pacific Islands as a creative locale in its own right.

Don and Kel Muna’s Shiro’s Head (pictured above), from Guam, and Aaron Condon and Mike Cruz’s Morning Comes So Soon, from the Marshall Islands, represent the tip of this new Pacific wave. Both films were born more from love and desire than any concrete system; with neither Guam nor the Marshall Islands having a film industry, these filmmakers made not only the films, but the entire support structure, themselves. Brothers Don and Kel Muna gained their education in Southern California film schools and honed their film skills with Northern California wedding videos before returning to Guam to make Shiro’s Head, a gang-tinged family drama with an intriguing rhythm all its own. Schoolteachers Aaron Condon and Mike Cruz joined forces with Marshallese youth nonprofit organizations to create Morning Comes So Soon, a Romeo-and-Juliet love story set among indigenous Marshallese and recent Chinese immigrants. Made in American territories located as near to Asia as to the U.S. mainland, both films merge American-indie tropes and character structure with the aesthetic freedom and experimental ethos of new work from the Philippines and China, creating a blend that’s truly (to echo the festival’s claim) a bridge between East and West.

A world-weary thug with soulful eyes and cheekbones … Read the rest