Waikiki
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“It is Being Told Now—Because It is Supposed to Be Told Now”: Christopher Kahunahana on Waikiki and Native Hawaiian Storytelling
With Waikiki opening in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, Oct. 27, 2023 (official site here), we’re reposting Jason Sanders’s 2020 interview with Christopher Kahunahana. A film with “a seventeen-day shoot and two+ years of post-production,” Christopher Kahunahana’s long-awaited feature debut Waikiki marks a coming of age for the emerging Hawaiian filmmaking scene. The first completed narrative feature film by a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) filmmaker, Waikiki follows a young indigenous woman, Kea (a mesmerizing Danielle Zalopany), working multiple jobs—hula dancer for tourists, karaoke hostess for drunks, Hawaiian-language schoolteacher for kids—just in order to hold on, but slowly starting to […]
by Jason Sanders on Nov 25, 2020 -
Hawaii Rising: Creating Community at the 37th Hawaii International Film Festival
A sense of optimism flowed through the 37th edition of the Hawaii International Film Festival, held over ten days in Honolulu this past November. Last year’s version may have been sucker-punched midway through thanks to the election of Donald Trump, which knocked the wind out of many audience members and staffers here in this deep-blue, Obama-proud state. A year later the crowds and the energy were back, along with an even-stronger determination to not only hear new stories, but to committedly tell and help preserve their own. While the amount of made-in-Hawaii documentary and narrative features was only slightly over […]
by Jason Sanders on Dec 20, 2017
