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 You Crazy, Kathleen Man’s
Lychee Thieves, and Vince Keala Lucero’s
Holumua), and even the return of former locals like director Eric Byler (with his accomplished, utterly unnerving documentary on immigration clashes in Virginia,
9500 Liberty) and producer Mynette Louie (here with Tze Chun’s riveting American indie
Children of Invention, which won the festival’s Puma Emerging Filmmaker Award).
Misawa (the cinematographer of the award-winning
Treeless Mountain) teamed with students at the University of Hawaii’s Academy for Creative Media for State of Aloha, a straightforward but well-done look at the history of Hawaii’s fifty years of statehood. Students were given the opportunity to learn from seasoned editors, sound recordists, cinematographers, and tech crews as they worked, creating not only a great documentary film in the process, but hopefully some future documentary filmmakers. No dry history lesson or talking-head monologue, State of Aloha captures not just the history of Hawaii, but the spirit of its people.
Marleen Booth’s
Pidgin: The Voice of Hawaii also aims its lens straight at the spirit of Hawaii, more specifically at its specific dialect/language/accent, “pidgin.” A blend of Native Hawaiian, English, Chinese, Portuguese, Japanese, and Tagalog that started among plantation workers a century ago, pidgin has been historically frowned upon by those wishing to “assimilate properly.” For many, though, it’s a source of pride and island identity, and Booth’s joyful film is a testament to both it and its just-as-colorful speakers. As a film on the history of language and semantics, Pidgin is a thoughtful, well-researched work; as a film on identity politics, everyday life, and speaking one’s mind (in one’s own tongue), it’s a real pleasure. Neither
Pidgin or
State of Aloha redefine the documentary form, of course, but both are wonderful examples of how cinema can represent its community.
Another pleasure could be found in Brent Anbe’s good-natured comic short
Ajumma! Are You Crazy?, whose plot—three star-struck middle-aged women will do anything to meet their favorite Korean soap-opera actor during a film festival appearance—is inspired, in part, by HIFF’s status as the premiere festival for, well, middle-aged women who’ll stop at nothing to meet their favorite Korean soap-opera star.
Ajumma’s plus-sized
Sex and the City-styled heroines (more Target than Coach, though, and far more appealing), along with its snappy dialogue and underdog pleasures, earned it the Audience Award for Best Short.
Not just content highlighting the island’s talents, HIFF continued to solidify its rising status as one of North America’s premiere destinations for Asian cinema. This year the fest screened such much-anticipated works as John Woo’s
Red Cliff, Bong Joon-ho’s Korean thriller
Mother, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s bizarre fantasy
Air Doll, Tsia Ming-liang’s
Face, Tony Jaa’s martial arts epic
Ong Bak 2, and Yukihiko Tsutsumi’s
20th Century Boys, a sci-fi opus involving schoolboys, end-of-the-world cults, comic books, and, um, T. Rex. Spotlights on Filipino commercial cinema and Okinawan filmmaking saw the fest reaching out to its fellow “islanders,” with Yosuke Nakagawa’s quiet tearjerker
Cobalt Blue and Yuji Nakae’s winning tropical-Shakespeare
Midsummer’s Okinawan Dream (pictured) among the standouts in the latter section. Attention should also be given to the appealing
Honokaa Boy by Japanese director Atsushi Sanada; shot in the sleepy Big Island town of Honokaa and revolving around a listless Japanese teen who befriends the community there, it places the sly observational charm of recent Japanese film in a gorgeous Hawaiian setting, and was one of the top films of the festival.
As usual, HIFF also highlighted strong “mainland” American talents, both established and emerging. Reknown Bay Area-based cinematographer Emiko Omori (whose credits include
Regret to Inform and
The Fall of the I-Hotel, as well as her directorial debut
Rabbit in the Moon) returned to HIFF with her portrait of the famed tattoo artist Ed Hardy,
Ed Hardy: Tattoo the World. Covering Hardy’s California childhood (where he gave classmates ink tattoos), his tattoo apprenticeships, his breakout as a recognized artist and his current fame as a global tattoo icon, the film moves far beyond the “Ed Hardy Brand” to discover Ed Hardy, the artist, and Hardy, the person; it’s also an amazingly personal portrait of a true American artist and iconoclast. Omori and Hardy have known one another for over 30 years (his San Francisco studio was the basis for her 1980 work, Tattoo City, and she boasts her own Hardy tattoo), and their relationship adds a warmth and depth to the film that’s rare to see.
Just beginning his career, the young American filmmaker Aaron Woolfolk brought his debut feature
The Harimaya Bridge to HIFF, where it made its North American premiere. Woolfolk used his experiences as an English-language teacher in Japan for this soft-spoken, graceful film, which follows an older African American man as he travels there to unravel the mysteries of his son’s death. More attuned to the rhythms of Naruse or Kinoshita than Scorcese or Spielberg,
The Harimaya Bridge is an intriguing surprise from such a young, unknown filmmaker, using simply told moments to capture the beauty of a mountainous Japanese village, or the sorrow of those whose lives cross paths there.
Fresh off its award-winning screenings in San Diego, Philadelphia, and Fort Worth, H.P. Mendoza’s San Francisco Mission-district-back-alley musical
Fruit Fly delivered a refreshing jolt of attitude to Hawaii audiences. This loud-and-proud, indie/Asian/queer hijacking of
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a worthy follow-up to Mendoza’s
Colma: The Musical (co-directed with Rich Wong), following its wide-eyed heroine (L.A. Renigan, a non-Hollywood Holly Golightly for the iPhone era) as she stumbles (and sings) through various drunken nights and hungover days.
Fruit Fly represents a new generation of Asian American filmmaking; its deceptively casual mash-up of ethnic and sexual identity politics is nuanced enough to fuel a few master’s thesis, but one doesn’t need a degree to understand the joy on offer.
Similar in attitude was Quentin Lee’s
The People I’ve Slept With, which made its world premiere here; this romantic comedy involes a young woman whose drunken one-night stands have left her suddenly pregnant, and with a few too many choices as to who, exactly, the daddy is. Thankfully updating the typically bland Hollywood rom-com with some refreshing openness towards female sexuality and an appealing multiracial line-up, the film also boasts a radiant lead duo in Karin Anna Cheung and Archie Kao, who bring a star power and screen presence that not only match, but overshadow, the casts of any current Hollywood romance.
Whether big-budget Asian genre films or small-scale American independents, HIFF once again offered many things to many people, but it was the local work that truly shone. Whether intentional or not in terms of addressing the cultural cutbacks, HIFF’s more focused “Island” line-up presented a showcase of the strengths, talents, and hopeful future of the Hawaiian film community; here’s hoping it not only survives the challenges it’s now facing, but thrives.
Labels: Festivals
# posted by Jason Guerrasio @ 12/07/2009 08:33:00 PM
