FLUX No. 20 Film

22

NEW WAVE CINEMA

Sundance Institute’s Native Lab Fellowship is helping indigenous filmmakers reshape Hawai‘i’s cinematic arc. From a director who fought her way back to the top to a filmmaker who refused to let life knock him down, featured here are five journeys of life and Sundance.

TABLE OF CONTENTS | FEATURES |

36

SOUNDING THE PŪ

Since 2009, ‘Ōiwi TV has been transforming the way viewers think about language, media, and indigenous identity in Hawai‘i. Tina Grandinetti sits down with co-founder Keoni Lee to uncover how the Hawaiian television station is utilizing technology to perpetuate the Hawaiian culture.

44

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Editor-at-large Sonny Ganaden recounts the tale of how the Hawaii International Film Festival has grown to become the state’s largest arts event over the last three decades, bringing world-class cinema—and a bit of glamour—to the isles.

52

DRIVING FACTORS

In 1994, a murder at a Hawai‘i dock sent shock waves through the local film and television industry. Reporter James Dooley, who covered the beat in the years that followed, gives a rundown on the case that still remains unsolved.

56

A WRINKLE IN TIME

On what begins as a dark and stormy afternoon (eventually turning into a perfect day in paradise, as it so often does) our heroes find themselves caught in a wrinkle between space and time in this fashion editorial shot by John Hook and styled by Aly Ishikuni.

Native Lab fellow ‘Āina Paikai shown at the Marine Education Training Center, home to the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

Showdown in Chinatown has inspired Hawai‘i auteurs for a decade. Shown here is the film challenge’s director, Cyrina Hadad.

EDITOR’S LETTER CONTRIBUTORS LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

LOCAL MOCO: VICTORIA KEITH AND THE SAND ISLAND STORY

ARTS : UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN

ARTS : GORDY HOFFMAN

HOMECOMING: DANA LEDOUX MILLER

HAWAII FIVE-OH WELL

ARTS: CYRINA HADAD OF SHOWDOWN IN

80

MUSIC : STREETLIGHT CADENCE

82

MUSIC: AMY HĀNAIALI‘I GILLIOM & WILLIE K

96

A HUI HOU: MOVIE THEATERS LOVED AND LOST

STARFRUIT

STYLE : SURF BOUTIQUE

Streetlight Cadence serenades passersby.

Academy for Creative Media alum Dana Ledoux Miller in Los Angeles.

STARFRUIT DEVELOPERS

Starfruit is full of nectar, simple to juice, and abundant when in season, which makes it perfect for a caipirinha cocktail, as suggested by chef John Memering. Get the recipe at fluxhawaii.com.

Photographer John Hook captures this moment of Drew Seibert caught between space and time at The Nutridge Estate atop Tantalus. See the rest of the images on page 56.

There are few places in the world where film can be developed beachside. Luckily for us, Hawai‘i is one of them. Check out this behind-the-scenes clip by Philip Lemoine of Chris Rohrer processing images in his Volkswagen Vanagon at Irma’s surf break on O‘ahu’s east side.

EDITOR’S LETTER

Film is transformative. It can rouse those watching it—make them laugh, make them cry, make them fume—as well as alter those making it. Not only does it capture moments in time, it has the power to incite social change, heal the broken, and uplift the downtrodden (one might even call it miraculous). Film carries cultures over seas to shores far, far away; ultimately, it can show us “how we’re different but ultimately the same,” as producer Beau Bassett says.

The resounding theme of this issue is the importance of the story, the importance of our story, and the necessity of sharing it with the world. “Our society is broken right now,” ‘Ōiwi TV co-founder Keoni Lee says. “The more we can get people ... to be supportive of an indigenous worldview that emphasizes balance between other people and the environment, the better off we’ll be”—the better off the world will be. Thankfully, cinema in the isles is blossoming like never before. No longer content to let the world tell their stories for them, local filmmakers are reclaiming that which they hold so dear, seizing opportunity, and fighting against all odds to bring their narratives to screens both big and small.

While cinema is the focal point in this issue, we can’t forget about film in photography. The features and profiles in this issue were shot on a variety of black and white and color film, most of which were processed by hand in garages, studio apartments, even on the beach. Despite the collapse of the film industry, starting with Eastman Kodak’s bankruptcy filing in 2012 followed by the selling of its iconic film portion a year later, analog seems to be experiencing a renaissance, even if only in small circles. We remain optimistic about the evolution of the film industry into something new, subscribing to the view of media theorist Marshall McLuhan, who said, “Old technologies become today’s art forms.”

As we anticipate exciting new futures for film in Hawai‘i—both cinematic and photographic—I leave you with this quote by the late Roger Ebert, published in his last blog post in 2013: “Thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.”

With aloha,

Lisa Yamada EDITOR lisa@nellamediagroup.com

Ara Feducia photographed ‘Ōiwi TV staff in action on Ektar 100 film, as recommended by Bobby Asato, owner of Treehouse. The staff was working on their second “Project Kuleana,” a music video promoting Hawaiian culture featuring a handful of the islands’ most prominent musicians. “Being around a group of people speaking in fluent Hawaiian was a learning experience,” she says. Another was predicting how the light changes throughout the day. “All in all, what I enjoy most about shooting on film is discovering how the candid shots will look after they’re developed.”

JONAS MAON

Jonas Maon shot the portrait of Streetlight Cadence using an expired roll of Kodak T-MAX P3200 black and white film.

“I’m totally not used to shooting with film, let alone shooting with film at night, so I was happy that Eric at Treehouse had recommendations for what I should try,” he says. “Using film definitely slows me down when I’m shooting since I don’t want to waste any frames, and it prompts me to not just rattle off shots like I would with a DSLR.” Call him nostalgic, but Maon appreciates the unique visual quality of film. “After all,” he says, “given the chance, I’d still prefer to pick up a book in print over an e-book.”

John Hook shot the portraits and fashion editorial in this issue with Kodak T-MAX 400 black and white film, Lomography 400 color film, and one roll of Kodak Portra. “With film, I had to get comfortable real quick and not waste,” says FLUX Hawaii’s photography director. “One of the portraits I shot, I showed up with only four frames left on the roll—don’t ask my why I didn’t bring more film—but we made it work.” Of developing, Hook says, “It’s like you’re playing a slot machine, or carrying someone else’s baby. I feel like somehow I’ll find a way to mess it up. But once the negatives come out developed, and you have frames visible on the roll and the exposure looks good, you feel like a rocket scientist.”

Aaron Yoshino shot the portraits of the Hawaii International Film Festival staff on Ilford Delta 400, and the portrait of ‘Ōiwi TV’s Keoni Lee on Fujifilm Neopan 400 (two of his favorite black and white films), all on his first camera ever, a Nikon FE. Yoshino also developed and scanned all his film and calls the process nostalgic. “It’s also time-consuming and kind of boring but in the best possible, Zen kind of way,” he says. Yoshino has been a freelance photographer for 16 years, the first five of which he shot analog. “If done correctly, shooting film is very similar to shooting digitally. It’s only unpredictable if you allow it to be.”

ARA FEDUCIA

JOHN HOOK

AARON YOSHINO

ABOUT THE DEVELOPERS | MASTHEAD

NATALIE NAKASONE

Natalie Nakasone developed the film shot by Jonas Maon from her home darkroom, Darkslide Laboratories, where she processes small custom orders of black and white film. “My darkroom has taken many different forms over the years—a college communal lab, an ex-boyfriend’s spare closet, a coworker’s kitchen sink,” she says. She graduated from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa with a BFA in photography and works as a freelance photographer and photo assistant, though her lab is her dream. “It’s the thing that all my jobs pay for, the thing that keeps me awake at night and gets me out of bed in the morning.”

CHRIS ROHRER

For this issue, Rohrer developed and processed all John Hook’s film in his Volkswagen Vanagon, which he converted into a darkroom. He has been collecting equipment with friends in hopes of opening a community darkroom, but since the van costs less, it does the trick for now. The film was processed out at the surf break Irma’s, where in the pitch-black of night, the beach essentially became the darkroom. Rohrer, who also shoots film photography, remains entranced by the medium.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard people ‘oooh’ and ‘ahhh’ over a print coming out of an inkjet printer,” he says, “but seeing a photograph slowly develop has a kind of magic to it.”

PUBLISHER

Jason Cutinella

EDITOR

Lisa Yamada

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Ara Feducia

MANAGING EDITOR

Anna Harmon

PHOTOGRAPHY DIRECTOR

John Hook

PHOTO EDITOR

Samantha Hook

FASHION EDITOR

Aly Ishikuni

EDITOR-AT-LARGE

Sonny Ganaden

COPY EDITOR

Andrew Scott IMAGES

Mark Ghee Lord Galacgac

Nick Joseph

Jonas Maon

Haren Soril

Landon Tom

Aaron Yoshino

Jonas Yun

CONTRIBUTORS

Matthew Dekneef Carmichael Doan

James Dooley

Beau Flemister

Tina Grandinetti

Kelli Gratz

Sarah Ruppenthal

Liza Simon

Naomi Taga

WEB DEVELOPER

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UPDATE:

In our last issue, Jeff Mull wrote a piece about public solutions to address the issue of homelessness in Hawai‘i. At the time, two sit-lie bills, which would have made it a crime to sit or lie down on streets or sidewalks in Chinatown and Waikīkī, appeared to have stalled. The Waikīkī bill received a second life in September, however, when Mayor Kirk Caldwell signed the ordinance into law as part of his “compassionate disruption” campaign to end homelessness, along with two other bills that prohibit public urination and defecation. “These bills are saying number one, our sidewalks in our great district of Waikīkī are made to traverse on,” Caldwell said in a KITV story. While the city continues wrestling with viable solutions, including various Housing First initiatives and the establishment of a temporary homeless camp in Sand Island, we want to know what you think about the city’s attempts. What do you think should be done? Share your thoughts with us.

I am originally from Hawaii but now reside in San Diego. I was really happy to find a copy of your magazine. It reminded me about all the things I love about Hawaii, especially the story on Kimo [Kahoano]. I remember small kid days watching him on Hawaii Stars with Carole Kai. What it really reminds me of though is dinners at grandma’s house, when we’d all be tuned into the show. Everyone would potluck and bring the dish that eventually would become their specialty and that everyone would look forward to. It reminds me of my aunty’s sweet sour spareribs and my uncle’s special spaghetti mac salad. Even though I’m thousands of miles away from Hawaii, your magazine brought a piece of home to me here on the mainland.

Mahalo, James Bailey

@discotraveler “Afternoon #BigIsland coffee and @fluxhawaii reading. #bliss #rainydays #hawaii #fluxhawaii #magic”

LOCAL

MOCO | VICTORIA KEITH |

THE SAND ISLAND STORIES

YOUTUBE IS GIVING VICTORIA KEITH’S 1980 DOCUMENTARY ABOUT SAND ISLAND A SECOND LIFE.

TEXT BY ANNA HARMON | IMAGES COURTESY OF VICTORIA KEITH

Sand Island is a small island off the coast of O‘ahu that is connected to Honolulu by a four-lane bridge. It has gone by several monikers over the last few centuries—Sand Island is only the most recent, following Mauli Ola, Quarantine Island, and Ānuenue, or Rainbow Island. It has received its fair share of affections and abuses over its lifetime. To name a few, it has been home to Native Hawaiian fishing grounds; an internment camp holding Japanese Americans for a brief time during World War

II; and the location for our current wastewater treatment plant. By 1979, when documentary filmmaker Victoria Keith and her partner Jerry Rochford of Windward Video turned their cameras on it and its residents, it was called Sand Island, as crooned about in the opening song accompanying Keith’s grainy color film: “There’s an island, by the sea. Beautiful Sand Island, beautiful Sand Island.” It is an adaptation of “Beautiful Hawai‘i” by Sand Island resident George Cash, who lived there with family.

I came upon The Sand Island Story in the comments section of a Civil Beat story about the August 2014 proposal to use a parcel of land on the island as a Housing First transition center for the homeless population being displaced by a newly passed sit-lie bill for Waikīkī. Shortly after, a friend posted the documentary to my Facebook wall. Somehow, this film that was over 30 years old had made its way to YouTube and was still raising awareness of a significant time in the island’s history. Here is what I learned: In 1979, a small, predominantly Native Hawaiian fishing community that had moved onto the public land, creating homes amidst what many considered dumping grounds, fought against being evicted by the state. They had been deemed squatters, and plans made for a park along the shoreline were moving forward. It is a story that is still hard to watch, regardless of whether or not viewers believe the community was legally entitled to its oceanfront residence.

Keith and Rochford were contracted by University of Hawai‘i to document the Sand Island happenings for a small project, but when they arrived, they knew they would be sticking around longer. “We got down there and met all the amazing people there, saw all the amazing things they had done to survive,” says Keith. “We went down there every day until the evictions, then a little bit afterwards.” A rough edit of the film was widely shared, and after receiving a grant from the Corporation of Public Broadcasting, Windward Video was also able to create a final 28-minute edit that aired nationally in 1981 on PBS and in Hawai‘i around the same time.

A few years ago, Keith donated the original footage of all of her work to ‘Ulu‘ulu, a project by the Academy for Creative Media at UH that preserves photography and film that relate to Hawai‘i’s people and its rich heritage. This includes every film she made as part of the Windward Video duo and on her own—such as Back to the Roots, a documentary about the culture surrounding taro and water and land issues affecting its future—along with 60 tapes of the raw footage from Sand Island. However, having been recorded on actual film, everything was aged; Two Green Valleys, the oldest documentary, had rotted on the shelves

and was missing large chunks of audio. (Filmed in 1975, Two Green Valleys was the first film she and Rochford made and was about successful grassroots efforts to prevent the eviction of farming families from agricultural land to make way for development within Waiāhole and Waikane valleys on O‘ahu.) She mailed the tapes to a studio in Kentucky to be restored, a complex process that includes putting the 1/2-inch reel-to-reel tapes in the oven at 200 degrees, and the results were dramatically improved digital renderings. “Because of that, I wanted to put Two Green Valleys up for the Waiāhole people,” she says.

Two Green Valleys became the second of numerous documentaries she uploaded to YouTube starting in early 2013; the first was The Sand Island Story. “I’ve always had people trying to get in touch with me, especially about The Sand Island Story,” says Keith, who still hears from people watching it for the first time, or rediscovering it. “They said that family had been in it and they hadn’t known about it until they saw it on YouTube.”

Keith got into documentary filmmaking after having two daughters and teaching at Castle High School. She returned to UH Mānoa to study journalism, and while she was there, worked with her former Castle students on a project that eventually turned into Two Green Valleys. She made the film with equipment borrowed from the department and edited at public libraries, which at the time, had three or four editing studios open to the community.

After 20 years of working second jobs and chasing grants to fund documentaries, Keith returned to teaching full time. She still keeps in touch with one of the familiar faces in The Sand Island Story, Puhipau, a man recognizable by his striking white beard who was then known as Abe Ahmad. After his experience at Sand Island, documented in an essay in the recently published book A Nation Rising, he decided to become a storyteller through film as well, joining forces with video producer Joan Lander, whom he met during the editing of The Sand Island Story, to form Nā Maka o ka Āina.

By early 1980, the homes on Sand Island were gone. Many of the island’s

nearly 400 residents chose to relocate beforehand; George Cash burned down his own structure before the Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources could destroy it. A handful of the community stayed even as their homes were bulldozed to the ground. Today, with the potential of a homeless population being relocated to a dirt lot alongside Sand Island’s main road, it all seems surprisingly relevant. Perhaps someone will record the story, captured in a series of 15-second Instagram posts, or, possibly, a 15-minute Vimeo video with its post-production funded via Kickstarter. Perhaps it won’t be documented at all. As for the story itself: Maybe Sand Island’s next chapter will be a surprising tale of success. Maybe, as others predict, it will be another black mark on the history of how Hawai‘i treats its most vulnerable community members. Whatever happens, until rising ocean levels slowly erase it from our shores, Sand Island will be there to meet our needs.

“It’s calling, calling to me. Beautiful Sand Island, beautiful Sand Island,” continues Cash’s song. “In the midst of all the garbage, mother nature made my home. By the shores of Sand Island, maybe won’t last too long.”

Visit fluxhawaii.com/sandisland to watch the documentary. To learn more about Keith’s documentaries, visit victoriakeith.com.

Previous page: Victoria Keith interviews Native Hawaiian sovereignty activist LaFrance Kapaka-Arboleda for the 1987 documentary Hawaiian Soul . This page, above: Victoria Keith (second from left) and crew with taro grower Sam Mock Chew in Waipi‘o during the filming of Back To The Roots in 1994; below: Joan Lander and Puhipau record Keith’s interview of Kaua‘i lawyer Chris Kealoha for Hawaiian Soul , co-produced by Naomi Sodetani.

NEW WAVE CINEMA

SUNDANCE INSTITUTE’S NATIVE LAB FELLOWSHIP IS HELPING INDIGENOUS FILMMAKERS RESHAPE HAWAI‘I’S CINEMATIC ARC.

TEXT BY SONNY GANADEN , TINA GRANDINETTI , KELLI GRATZ , AND LISA YAMADA

OPENING IMAGE BY ARA FEDUCIA | IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

Mystical, relatable, inherently valuable— films are cultural artifacts that are telling of language, traditions, and infrastructure. Much like the multilayered images that make up a film, the inner workings of the Sundance Institute’s Native Lab Fellowship are intimate, stimulating, and convey beauty in the early stages of development.

From a pool of more than a hundred participants representing native communities, only four artists are selected to participate each year. In the past few years, several artists from Hawai‘i have been among those chosen for the fellowship, including Ty Sanga, ‘Āina Paikai, Beau Bassett, Ciara Lacy, and Chris Kahunahana. (The first chosen participant was Nā‘ālehu Anthony, who co-founded ‘Ōiwi TV. Read about his journey on page 36.)

“They are engaged at a particular level of writing and are able to collaborate with various creative advisors that help them tell the best version of their story,” says Bird Runningwater, director of Sundance’s Native American and Indigenous Program. “We create our own safe environment so that the deepest, most developmental work can happen,” he says. “It’s cathartic, personal.” From there, it’s up to the artist to bring their projects to fruition.

Runningwater has always been intrigued by this sense of narrative formed through imagery. From being a youngster on the playgrounds of Native American reservations in New Mexico to a journalism student at the University of Oklahoma, he’s had to navigate his way through different cultures spanning thousands of years. “I’m

half Cheyenne, half Apache,” he begins. “I remember going back and forth from my mom and dad’s reservation, trying to figure out how I’m going to speak both Apache and Cheyenne. But it was this level of culture each side had that fascinated me and continues to inspire me today.”

Runningwater got his start working for the Ford Foundation, managing its global fund initiatives, and then for Fund of the Four Directions, a private philanthropic organization owned by the Rockefeller family, before taking the job at Sundance. “I was well aware of this inauthenticity running through media,” he says. “But I also knew it was possible to present an authentic perspective. Our goal at Sundance is to find original, authentic, individual voices that we can get behind, to find that something we haven’t seen, while maintaining a certain level of artistry about cinema.”

Since his appointment as director, he’s been able to slowly build the global network of filmmakers to include those from Hawai‘i, Alaska, New Zealand, and other areas of the world. “When I first came to Hawai‘i, I saw some really interesting talents,” he says. “I connected with so many people. Right now we’re supporting our former fellows Ty and Chris to develop their features, as well as Beau and Ciara’s documentary about the Hawaiian prisoners who are being housed in Arizona. For some reason, a lot of talent is coming out of O‘ahu. There’s something really rich happening there.”

Because of this growing cinematic culture, next fall the Sundance Institute plans to bring its Shorts Lab, a half-day workshop dedicated to empowering the next generation of filmmakers, to the Honolulu Museum of Art. “Hathaway Jakobsen [the museum’s chief advancement officer] and I came together and thought about what we could do to serve the native community here,” he says. “In the Shorts Lab, we are able to meld the Native Lab support, where fellows can talk about their projects and experiences through the lab, and in turn inspire others.”

In the pages that follow, read about the journeys of Native Lab fellows Kahunahana, Paikai, Lacy, Bassett, and Sanga.

LAST MAN STANDING: CHRIS KAHUNAHANA

It’s the middle of a Tuesday, and Christopher Kahunahana orders another round of drinks at the Old Spaghetti Factory overlooking Honolulu’s Kaka‘ako waterfront. It’s a place long-forgotten by those without children, a self-contained universe replete with stained glass, a reconstructed trolley car, creaky wood paneling, and menu items dating back to Honolulu’s Frank Fasi administration. A place you think you know but you’ve got it all wrong about. “Brah, this place has cheap beer, AC, and look at the view,” Kahunahana remarks. “I used to work in a film lab right down the street.”

Handling chemicals in the dark room seems like a lifetime ago for Kahunahana. Most of Honolulu has a “Chris” story, and most of them were documented on nightlife blogs during the party renaissance that occurred in the city’s Chinatown over the last decade. After a childhood in Waimānalo and Kailua, the oldest of three siblings spent nearly a decade in San Francisco running a variety of clubs and galleries, then moved to New York, before making his way home in 2004 to open Nextdoor, an expansive night club on Honolulu’s Hotel Street with vaulting crimson brick walls, murals by visiting urban artists, and for most of its life, no air conditioning. When one co-owner left the business and another passed away in a tragic accident, Kahunahana found himself as the club’s sole owner, hanging on with low funds and lots of friends.

Check the old websites, and you’ll see Kahunahana running a club with liquor out of a backpack and a one-night license; zombie Kahunahana manning the door behind a repurposed church lectern; a beleaguered Kahunahana mopping a slippery dance floor after a famous DJ poured vodka down some club-goer’s hatch. For those who were in the scene, who unconsciously documented it in part because it was fleeting, it was the best city in the world. And it was Kahunahana’s disarming, self-effacing charm that made much of it happen, like a character out of fiction, or rather, animation. To see him as a filmmaker—a legitimate one with

“We had to interrogate if we identify ourselves as native artists, or as artists who happen to be native,” says Christopher Kahunahana of his experience with Sundance Institute’s Native Lab.

From comedic releases poking fun at local culture to everyday documentations of the Hōkūle‘a, ‘Āina Paikai’s “drama-dy” poses questions and plays with the future. Paikai is shown at the Marine Education Training Center, home to the Polynesian Voyaging Society.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”

ambitions to take Hawai‘i’s cinema and Hawai‘i’s story to the world—is new to those who knew him from the parties and the scene.

But there was always another Chris, the guy in the daytime, who spoke quietly of Akira Kurosawa and Ingmar Bergman, who, when meeting strangers, introduced himself as a filmmaker. Kahunahana made eight films for Showdown in Chinatown, which originally took place at Nextdoor, a competition that gives local creators 24 to 72 hours to shoot and submit a short film based off a common theme. A few times, he won. Most often, he couldn’t make the deadline. “I could tell where I was artistically, even though they mostly sucked,” he says of the shorts. “I could see where my vision was headed and how I could become more refined.”

Then, opportunity struck. After he sold the club a year ago, Kahunahana began work on a script titled Lāhainā Noon, which takes its name from the local colloquialism for the summer solstice phenomenon when the sun passes directly overhead, leaving figures shadowless. The story follows a few local characters, as their shadows, acting as their subconscious forms, act out unspoken desires. This script, along with a feature-length one Kahunahana dubbed Karaoke Kings, became part of an application process that could further the dream; a chance at a fellowship with Native Lab. Sure enough, he and his screenplays were accepted.

Over the course of several weeks, Kahunahana was counseled by some of the best native filmmakers on the planet, such as Chris Eyre, who directed the 1998 movie Smoke Signals, and Runningwater, who has established native film labs around

the world. “When they said I was going to an Apache reservation, brah, I thought I was headed to a Hawaiian homestead for a workshop. They had us at this sciencefiction hotel in Mescalero [New Mexico] in the Inn of the Mountain Gods.” He was instructed to just take it all in, and later, to produce. “We had to really interrogate if we identify ourselves as native artists, or as artists who happen to be native,” he explains. The workshop shaped Lāhainā Noon, which premiered at the 2014 Hawaii International Film Festival. Kahunahana is currently developing Karaoke Kings, which he describes as “like Rocky but for karaoke in Honolulu,” about a guy trying to make his dreams happen. The truth is, being a club owner was a stepping-stone to the true vocation. Kahunahana has always been a filmmaker in waiting, and if he was authoring his own biography, Nextdoor might be a footnote, cited as the source of material for a new life of storytelling. But for filmmaking, there may have been no better a training ground. “This is more than just a film, it’s about managing, budgeting, running something with a lot of people,” he says.

Something about the story arc, about the redemptive capacity of arts and making hard work look fun, is reminiscent of Mahatma Gandhi’s famous counsel for agents of social change: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Kahunahana takes the last sip of his beer and amends it with experience: “Just keep showing up for long enough, and after everybody else self-destructs, you win!” he cackles with a gap-toothed grin. Then, he’s off to finish the last edits of the movie.

MOMENTS REIMAGINED:

‘ÅINA PAIKAI

His full name, Kamaninoka‘āina, meaning “the wind of the land,” was given to him by his father, who valued the importance of the land and all that it provides. “He wanted me to be like the wind,” ‘Āina Paikai says. “Free.” This free-moving mentality might be how Paikai is able to create such amusing and entertaining films, like Moke Action, a slapstick comedy about two guys looking to “scrap ova one broke slippah” (subtitled for the “Pidgin English challenged”), while remaining grounded in his identity. “I like to call it drama-dy,” he says. “It makes for an easy reaction for an audience.”

His name also appears as screenwriter, producer, and director alongside films including Nani Ke Kalo, which imagines what Hawai‘i would be like if the kingdom was returned, and The Great Heart of Waiokāne, a documentary about Edward Wendt, a Vietnam war veteran and advocate for Native Hawaiian rights who continues to battle Alexander & Baldwin over water diversions on Maui.

Historically, Paikai says film hasn’t been produced or told from an indigenous perspective. “I think it’s important to offer that perspective and insight,” the 30-yearold filmmaker says from the ‘Ōiwi TV headquarters in Honolulu, where he works as a photographer and editor. “I hope to make films that are impactful to Hawai‘i and worldly enough for all of us to enjoy.”

Paikai, who grew up in Pearl City, turned to video games and comic books as an adolescent looking for escape, and it was ultimately this fantasy realm that drew him into a career in media. He enrolled in the Academy for Creative Media at the

University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and was captivated by the foreign films he watched in prerequisite classes. “Seeing films with the actors speaking different languages got me thinking about why there weren’t more films in Native Hawaiian,” he says. “That was really the spark.”

He quickly took to the indigenous filmmaking track under the wing of the late Merata Mita, a pioneering Maori filmmaker known for her work on Mauri (1988), Hotere (2001), and Boy (2010). “She always used to tell me, ‘Anyone can tell a story, but not in the proper way,’” he recalls. “She became one of my first mentors, and was the one who groomed Bird [Runningwater] into his current position. She even got me this job.”

He found further inspiration in indigenous movies like City of God (2002) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014), the kind of films that, he says, break the mold of what native movies are supposed to be. “The native film model … lacks authenticity. We are such a small group of peoples that it’s more than just being slid in as a minority group.” He began writing scripts in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i, in the Native Hawaiian language, and quickly developed an approach to filmmaking that portrayed serious issues in a genuine but light-hearted way. One example is a workin-progress documentary he began while immersed in Native Lab. Out of hundreds of submissions, his script about the late George Jarrett Helm Jr., a Hawaiian activist and talented falsetto musician nicknamed “Da Frog,” was enough to win over the judging panel. “For me, he’s been a dedicated Hawaiian hero,” he says. “A lot of people don’t understand his story. He was a beautifully talented musician prior to his activism. I wanted to portray his love of

the land through his music. He overcomes his raspy voice, bullying from his brother, ultimately finding confidence for what he needed to do.”

Paikai is a fan of all genres, from dark depictions of humanity to comedic releases to everyday documentations such as that of Hōkūle‘a’s Worldwide Voyage, part of a series he’s helping ‘Ōiwi TV produce (he recently returned from documenting the leg of the trip from Tahiti to Samoa). He has an insatiable desire to pose questions, imagine scenarios, and play with the future. In his short film Blessed Assurance, he explores the question, “What if Hawai‘i ran out of gas? ” In it, a young man spends the day surfing, spearfishing, pounding poi, and walking everywhere because there are no running cars. Or, he poses in his film Nani Ke Kalo , if the Hawaiian Kingdom was reinstated, what would Hawai‘i be like in 30 years? According to Paikai’s imaginations, the language would be restored and only the elderly would speak English.

Asked if he’s ever surprised by how his films are received, he’s characteristically modest. “It’s for other people to define. If we keep the emphasis on the art, we can keep the integrity of film intact. My route is to keep putting stuff out there, and people will either enjoy it or not. Either way, it will help our culture along the way.”

THE INCHES: CIARA LACY

Of all the plot narratives found in movies, there’s one that resonates with Ciara Lacy the most. “Oh, the comeback, right?” she says. “I’m a big believer in redemption. I don’t believe in waiting for somebody else to find our solutions. You have to find it yourself.” In discussing the comeback, it’s nearly impossible to avoid references to sports films. The now-famous locker room speech by Tony D’Amato, played by Al Pacino, in Any Given Sunday, immediately comes to mind: “We’re in hell right now, gentlemen. And we can stay here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell one inch at a time.” Emboldened, the team emerges from the locker room and goes on to win the game. While victory in real life is never quite as dramatic, the motifs in Any Given Sunday and such films are not unlike Lacy’s own.

Lacy grew up the daughter of a Native Hawaiian activist, and as a child, she remembers her mother hauling off her and her two siblings to protests and rallies. She remembers when her mother was arrested during the building of the H-3 freeway, where she and a few others had camped out in protest. “She just didn’t think it was right to build a freeway there, and when there’s something that doesn’t feel right, you do something about it,” says Lacy. “When I think back, I’ve definitely become like my mother in a lot of ways.”

As the valedictorian of her graduating class at Kamehameha Schools, Lacy was about as driven as they come. She went on to study psychology at Yale, receiving academic scholarships but still working three jobs to get by. The standout student, however, had other aspirations in mind. “I’ve always wanted to make music videos, ever since I was in high school,” says Lacy, who recalls sitting in her room entranced by directors like Michel Gondry, known as much for his music videos (a favorite of Bjork, The White Stripes, and The Chemical Brothers, among others) as his feature films (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). “But I didn’t tell anybody that’s actually what I really wanted to do in college,” she says. “I guess I was a little scared.”

After college, Lacy moved to New York, where she scrounged around the city

to make ends meet, temping, teaching SAT prep, even selling hot dogs. As fate (read: drive) would have it, she found a job with a small company that made rock ’n’ roll documentaries. “I would basically just prepare their Fedex packages, but I didn’t care, I was stoked,” she recalls. She later held jobs with Lion Television, where she worked on reality TV shows about wedding dresses and home security, and 44 Pictures, which produced large music productions, shooting concerts at Madison Square Garden and Radio City Music Hall. Her career was taking off. Then, a mysterious, debilitating illness brought her life to a jolting halt. She began getting pain in her hands, which she shook off as carpel tunnel. But then it got progressively worse, so much so that she was forced to move back to Hawai‘i. “I couldn’t carry my laundry, my purse, couldn’t work on a computer for a long period of time; I couldn’t really type; I could handle maybe one car ride a day,” she says, ticking off the painful symptoms delivered by what doctors called a careerending disease. “I was used to being independent. At 30, that’s when you want to be building your career … but here I was going to physical therapy, on painkillers, and no one could figure out what was wrong with me.” Doctors eventually diagnosed her with thoracic outlet syndrome, brought on as a result of a genetic malformation between her collarbone and rib and exacerbated by repetitive stress. “I was pretty depressed, I got fat, my attitude sucked. I just didn’t know what to do. I had my whole life back in New York.”

Lacy began seeing a physical therapist, one of her mother’s friends, who encouraged her to continue her work in film. “She threw out ideas all the time, and I was like, how am I supposed to do a documentary anyway when I can’t even carry a camera?” But eventually, one of those ideas stuck. “She told me about this very short piece done on these men dancing hula in an Arizona prison. I finally watched it,” Lacy recalls. “And I cried. … It was a really tough time for me, and in some crazy way, I thought—and this is gonna sounds nuts— but I had this thought of, oh, we could heal each other.”

The clip became the basis for Lacy’s feature-length documentary Out of State, as well as the platform for her application to

Native Lab in 2012, which Beau Bassett, a childhood classmate from Kamehameha as well as a Native Lab fellow, encouraged her to apply for. “I’d like to think that I’m openminded, that I’m progressive, but I had a lot to learn about my own prejudices going into making the film,” says Lacy, who applies this re-evaluation of herself to society as well. “Systems are often contextually based, so when our society changes, the way we approach things should change too, but that fluidity doesn’t always naturally happen.”

Today, Lacy is back at it, but this time at the helm, working daily with a crew of just two others to produce Out of State. Where her previous jobs entailed working on projects with structures and financing already in place, Out of State is a brand new experience, one that requires her to direct and produce, among the myriad of other tasks that go into bringing a documentary to life, like securing funding and distribution. It’s a project more than two years in the making, with production to wrap at the end of 2015. As Native Hawaiian filmmakers, Lacy and Bassett, who is helping produce the film, consider Out of State their “kuleana project,” one that both are willing to fight for. “It’s not something easy to do, but we are compelled to do it,” says Lacy. “Because how do you live if you don’t have hope? I think hope is what’s important to being human, and everybody deserves to have a little bit of that.”

“How do you live if you don’t have hope?” wonders producer and director Ciara Lacy, who, despite suffering what she thought was a career-ending disability, is working to produce her first feature-length documentary.

“That’s one thing that is missing from Hawai‘i cinema, that voice that really makes it a point to say, ‘This is what’s so beautiful about this place; this is how we’re different but ultimately how we’re the same.’”

THE HUNT: BEAU BASSETT

In his dreams, Beau Bassett can see a boy—a younger version of himself—splashing through streams in Kahalu‘u on O‘ahu’s east side, where he grew up. He’s on the hunt, looking for the black and gold fish with which to fill his aquarium. “Ohhh, swordtails,” he recalls emphatically from the law offices of Pitluck Kido and Aipa in downtown Honolulu, where he works. “I still dream about them. They play out like films in my brain.”

Years later and Bassett is still on the hunt, but this time for narratives to produce. Bassett, who took part in Native Lab in 2008, fell into filmmaking by way of lawyering. “I got into law because I had all these ideas about social change that I wanted to see reflected, and I thought the law was the answer to fix it,” he says. After attending law school in 2005 and learning the process involved that actually leads to change, Bassett realized that policy was only as valuable as the populace makes it. “So much of our understanding and identities are formed not just by what’s in front of us physically but through media, and that was a big eye-opener.”

It was on a trip to Japan during his last year in law school that his future in filmmaking was affirmed. Wandering the streets of Tokyo, he saw a culture that had a firm grip on both its past and its present. He became fascinated by television programs similar to Soko Ga Shiritai on KIKU, which features everyday people

doing everyday things (abalone divers in Atami, turnip farmers in Shinanoji). “For it to be common to be able to turn on the TV and access that kind of information—where even the most modern Japanese young person who’s growing up in the city and creating their own identity can still tap into that traditional culture,” he says, “I thought how amazing it was to always have that informing their identity.”

It’s a notion that Bassett could easily identify with, growing up in the country but now living city life in Honolulu. “A lot of what inspires me is the constant tug at my spirit to address both needs, the old and new, the natural and synthetic,” says the Hawaiian-Chinese Bassett, whose childhood was marked by big family gatherings, fishing, and picking limu in front of his grandma’s house in Kāne‘ohe Bay. “I grew up loving it so much, and loving all the characters in my family really inspired me to want to tell the stories of my own family,” he says. “Then to meet different people and realize that every family is so different and yet we hold onto the same values—I feel like that’s one thing that is missing from Hawai‘i cinema, that voice that really makes it a point to say, ‘This is what’s so beautiful about this place; this is how we’re different but ultimately how we’re the same.’”

Bassett’s current project, Out of State, which he’s producing with Lacy, puts this challenge to the test. The film, which centers on Hawai‘i prisoners housed in Arizona correctional facilities who are learning to dance hula, is ultimately “about the ability

of culture and art, song, dance, chant, history, and religion to aid in rehabilitating the human spirit,” according to Bassett, “rehabilitating someone to find value in themselves.”

While he aspires to do more in local film, Out of State is about all he can manage between billable hours at the law firm. One can still dream though. With the islands’ freshwater resources changing before his eyes, Bassett is eager to do more in the medium he’s found most effective to preserve the areas that practically raised him. The limu he grew up picking, for example, is now long gone, choked out by foreign species. “A big part of my future is being more involved in preserving freshwater resources,” he says. “It’s really important to my upbringing that other people from the area be able to still experience that.”

“So

much of our identities are formed through media,” says Beau Bassett, shown here in his downtown Honolulu law office, who got into filmmaking because he wanted to enact social change.

“When I got into filmmaking, I wanted to tell stories as messages,” says Ty Sanga, whose Emmy Award-winning show Family Ingredients will start its national run on PBS in 2015.

FINDING BALANCE:

TY SANGA

Ty Sanga is among a select group of filmmakers—Native Hawaiian or otherwise—who can call themselves Emmy award-winners. The food travel show pilot he directed, Family Ingredients, won a regional Emmy in 2014, and traces Hawai‘i’s family recipes back to their origins. His work has garnered praise from big-time film producers, critics, and audiences alike. His acclaimed Hawaiianlanguage short film Stones, which screened at Sundance in 2011, captivated audiences with its poignant portrayal of a couple living in isolation, struggling to accept newcomers. The noise from Sundance was undeniable.

Recently returned to Hawai‘i from graduate school at Chapman University in Orange County, California, Sanga couldn’t be happier to be back in the islands. Although the young filmmaker acknowledges that leaving the trappings of Hollywood, known as the filmmaking capital of the world, was tough, he realizes the importance of his return. Finding himself writing films solely about Hawai‘i, Sanga knew he needed to be in the place in which the stories were conceived; it was pointless for him to be anywhere else.

But contrary to all appearances, Sanga didn’t always want to be a filmmaker. His parents managed hotels in Hawai‘i, and he was headed in that route, studying travel industry management and working in hotels himself for five years. It wasn’t until he screened his first film at the Hawaii International Film Festival—Plastic Leis, about a young Hawaiian hula dancer’s struggle to find her roots—that he realized a career in film could be a reality.

As a child, Sanga spent the summers with his family in Los Angeles, where the disparities that existed between Hawai‘i and the mainland became apparent. “My cousins would tease me about my Pidgin accent, and it was there I really saw the differences in social and economic class,” he recalls. “But, my father would always tell me to be a proud Hawaiian … that I was Hawaiian first, then Filipino, and Chinese. When I got into filmmaking, I wanted to tell stories as messages.”

Sanga’s films tend to relay true experiences he had growing up in Hawai‘i,

eloquently weaving together heavy issues that face our islands while tapping into the lighter side of entertainment. His film Follow the Leader, about a boy growing up in Kalihi collecting basketball cards, “addressed racism and the divide between private and public schools,” says Sanga. Instead of straight historical storytelling, Sanga’s films are wandering narratives, echoes of legends, and thoughtful dialogue, spoken in native tongue by actors such as Moses Goods and Rava Shastid. They are inspired by the past but are retold in a way that reshapes our understanding of modernday society.

Part of what makes Sanga’s films so authentic is that they stray from the mainstream model. He credits his Native Lab fellowship, which connected him with Runningwater and other industry advisors, for giving him the tools to tell his stories the right way. “They want to invest in storytellers,” he says. “They want to help strengthen our voice and artwork and equalize the balance of what’s coming out of Hawai‘i besides Hawaii Five-0.”

Sanga speaks energetically about his current projects, including the continuation of Family Ingredients, which was recently picked up by PBS Hawaii to go national in May of 2015, as well as his documentary The Life of Pinky Thompson, the closing film at the fall 2014 Hawaii International Film Festival. “I have been working on it for four years, and I forgot how long documentaries take!”

Among his other works in progress is his feature film After Mele, which he began working on during his fellowship with Sundance. “It’s about my relationship with my father and brother. My father passed away when I was in high school, and growing up, we were disconnected from his side altogether. This film deals with what it means to be a native to Hawai‘i, what was expected of us, and how everything finds its balance.”

SOUNDING THE PŪ

‘ŌIWI

TV STRIVES TO HO‘O HAWAI‘I MEDIA, TECHNOLOGY, AND THE WAY WE RELATE TO OUR ISLAND HOME.

TEXT

BY TINA GRANDINETTI | PORTRAIT BY AARON YOSHINO ON SET IMAGES BY ARA FEDUCIA

On a hot October day in Makiki, as the air begins to thicken with humidity, the noises of Ke‘eaumoku Street traffic are calmed by the bellow of the pū (conch shell). The staff of ‘Ōiwi TV gather outside their office and sing a mele as they look toward the hillsides that rise above the city.

E ku‘i e ka lono i o nā kai ‘ewalu, A lohea maka ka leo e ka nui manu Ua ala, ua laha, ua ‘ikea Ke aloha o nā pu‘u nui o Makiki ē

(Let the stories of Hawai‘i be heard Let them be heard by all Awake, widespread, and known Is the aloha of Makiki)

Since ‘Ōiwi TV went on air in 2009, its crew has worked in places many of us can only dream of, from the blinding white atolls of Papahānaumokuākea to the deep green hills of Fare Hape in Tahiti. But it is here, in a converted three-story house in Makiki, where the day-to-day work of this local production company happens. Schedule permitting, each workday begins with this morning piko, a kind of centering protocol that brings the staff together to oli and share some guiding mana‘o, or thoughts, for the day. The piko itself is a reminder that ‘Ōiwi TV is not your average production company, and the fact that it takes place in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i, the native tongue of Hawaiians, is a statement that ‘Ōiwi is not just here to do things differently but to transform the way we think about language, media, and indigenous identity in Hawai‘i.

LOOKING THROUGH THE HAWAIIAN LENS

Hawai‘i’s relationship with film began in the years following World War II, when America’s paradisiacal darling began to grace the silver screen in South Seas films. Though the camera loves Hawai‘i—is perhaps, infatuated with it—historically, its relationship with kānaka maoli (Native Hawaiians) has been exploitative. For Hollywood, Hawai‘i is a backdrop, its people merely props for Western stories of love, adventure, and coconuts. More insidiously, the news media too readily turns to Native Hawaiians for headline stories of conflict (i.e. coverage of Representative Faye Hanohano’s outbursts at the state capitol; a Maui man’s rants to tourists on the beach; and Kamana‘ opono Crabbe’s dissenting letter to the very board he represents, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs), perpetuating a narrative plagued by negativity and deficit while ignoring stories of success and community.

For founders Keoni Lee and Nā‘ālehu Anthony, the idea for ‘Ōiwi TV emerged as a way to leverage the immense power of visual media and technology to change this paradigm and begin to tell Hawaiian stories from a Hawaiian worldview. ‘Ōiwi TV currently reaches more than 220,000 households via Oceanic Time Warner Cable’s Digital Channel 326 and engages a worldwide audience through its online and social media platforms. Lee and Anthony met as graduate students in Shidler School of Business at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and completed their thesis project on the Polynesian Voyaging Society together. “We became good friends through that project, and when it was finished, we decided that one day we’d start something for the community,” says Lee.

“The idea for a Hawaiian television channel, a station for the nation, had been around for years,” he adds, “but in 2008, there was a perfect storm of opportunity.” Technology was getting cheaper, Kamehameha Schools was expanding its investments in the community, ‘Aha Pūnana Leo was partnering with KGMB to do Hawaiian language news segments, and Oceanic Time Warner Cable launched an interactive television program. Conditions were ripe to bring their vision to reality. Today, Lee and Anthony have come full circle, right back to

their graduate thesis project: ‘Ōiwi TV was asked to document the Polynesian Voyaging Society’s Worldwide Voyage onboard the Hōkūle‘a and Hikianalia. “It’s just another affirmation that we’re on the right path,” says Lee.

In the five years since going on-air, ‘Ōiwi has carved itself a unique position within the Hawaiian community. In addition to in-house projects like Nā Loea, which highlights masters in different areas of Hawaiian knowledge, ‘Ōiwi also contracts its services to clients looking to share their work through professional media. By using its platform to show that Hawaiian language and culture is thriving, ‘Ōiwi fundamentally challenges the dominant representations of Hawaiian people that too often devalue their knowledge systems and ways of being. “We get to tell the stories of our people,” says Lee, pausing for a second as if to savor that simple fact. “Hopefully, we’re the ones our community can trust to provide a fair and authentic representation of their stories.”

On top of the pressures faced by any production company in the cutthroat world of corporate media, ‘Ōiwi’s staff takes seriously the kuleana, or responsibility, of being accountable to community. That often means providing their services at deep discounts to community members who may otherwise not be able to afford high-quality, professional media and taking the time to meet with interview subjects beforehand, with cameras off, to answer all the “who yo’ maddah, who yo’ faddah, where you grad” questions that help us gauge an outsider’s positionality, genealogy, and relation to their work. But time and again, the folks at ‘Ōiwi seem to pull off this delicate balance. At this year’s Hawaii International Film Festival, ‘Ōiwi screened a documentary film about Hui Malama I Na Kupuna ‘O Hawai‘i Nei’s final repatriation of iwi (human remains) before the organization eventually disbands. The project presented unique challenges because the bones of kūpuna require a level of respect that is often difficult to maintain from behind a camera lens. “For Hui Malama to be able to trust that we would know how to act and tell such a sacred story was quite an honor,” says Lee.

The staff at ‘Ōiwi TV work on their “Project Kuleana” music video at UH Mānoa’s Center for Hawaiian Studies.

“The more we can get people to be supportive of an indigenous worldview that emphasizes balance between other people and the environment, the better off we’ll be,” says ‘Ōiwi TV

Keoni Lee on the impact of normalizing the Native Hawaiian language.

founder

HO‘O HAWAI‘I

Like the sound of the pū at morning piko, ‘Ōiwi serves as a vehicle to amplify native breath and sound a call to bring people together. Recognizing that culture and worldview are codified in language, one of ‘Ōiwi TV’s main missions is to normalize ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i by making it heard. Roughly 25 percent of ‘Ōiwi’s programming is in ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i, but creating Hawaiian language content, especially with accompanying English subtitles, is time and cost intensive, and funding is limited. While Maori TV in Aotearoa receives nearly $50 million dollars annually in government funding, state funding is still a dream for ‘Ōiwi, despite the fact that Hawaiian is recognized as an official state language. “I’d like to see us at 51 percent or more Hawaiian language programming one day,” says Lee.

The staff at ‘Ōiwi envisions media as a way to extend the reach of ‘ōlelo beyond educational spaces like Hawaiian immersion schools and the university’s Hawaiian Studies program. While the academic world has achieved incredible success in language revitalization, people are beginning to realize that for ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i to truly thrive, it must be heard and spoken outside of the classroom: in government, at home, in the media, by Hawaiians and non-Hawaiians who live in Hawai‘i. Big Island native and immersion-school graduate Ku‘lei Bezilla works as a producer for ‘Ōiwi TV. “Education is one small sliver of a person’s life,” she says. “If language is limited to education, you’re going to learn it and never use it again, but if we can infuse ‘ōlelo into our media, we take one more step towards revitalizing and normalizing ‘ōlelo.”

Bezilla likens the role of Hawaiian media makers in language revitalization to producers of Hawaiian language newspapers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when Native Hawaiian nationalists produced their own newspapers during a time of intense political upheaval. In the years following the illegal overthrow and occupation of the Hawaiian Kingdom, the papers served as a fiber that bound together the political struggles of the nearly universally literate lāhui, or nation. As Hawaiian language began to embody the political power and struggles of Hawaiian nationalists, it became an increasing threat to the colonial project, eventually

prohibited from being spoken as a language of instruction in schools. These newspapers, however, served as repositories of information, and when language revitalization began in earnest after the Hawaiian cultural renaissance in the 1970s, the papers served as critical sources of knowledge for Hawaiian scholars across the islands. With 6.1 percent of Hawai‘i’s population speaking Hawaiian at home as of 2008, ‘Ōiwi TV is continuing the work of the revitalization movement on a new front. “We’re just perpetuating what our ancestors have been doing for so many generations—leveraging the media of our time,” says Bezilla. “We take this technology and ho‘o Hawai‘i it, or make it Hawaiian.”

Like their predecessors who painstakingly crafted stories letter by letter on newspaper presses, the folks at ‘Ōiwi are working to ho‘o Hawai‘i a foreign technology so that Hawaiian language and worldview can reach a wider audience of both native and non-indigenous people in Hawai‘i. “How you are related to the world and how you verbalize that relationship teaches you so much about your place in it,” says Lee. ‘Ōiwi’s commitment to ‘ōlelo Hawai‘i thus goes beyond numerical victories that show impressive increases in the number of Hawaiian language speakers. He adds, “Our society is broken right now, and the more we can get people—Hawaiian or non-Hawaiian—to speak the language and be supportive of an indigenous world view that emphasizes balance between other people and the environment, the better off we’ll be.”

NAVIGATING NEW WATERS

‘Ōiwi TV is not alone in its conviction that Hawaiian knowledge and values have something to teach the world. In 2013, when the Polynesian Voyaging Society launched Hōkūle‘a’s Worldwide Voyage to spread the message of mālama honua, or “to care for our Earth,” across the globe, ‘Ōiwi TV was chosen to document the journey, streaming videos via satellite from the very beginning of the journey through its final moments in 2017. “This was an opportunity to take what we do at ‘Ōiwi TV and put it on the mothership,” says Lee. And he means it literally. ‘Ōiwi traces its genealogy to the Hōkūle‘a in more ways than one. Co-founder Nā‘ālehu Anthony is

a certified captain for the voyaging society, and directed Papa Mau: The Wayfinder, a 2012 feature-length documentary about the legendary sailing master Mau Piailug. Hōkūle‘a’s first voyage in 1976 began a movement to revitalize and respect indigenous knowledge. “Hōkūle‘a raised the consciousness of Pacific Islanders,” says Lee. “Now we can speak truth to power and bring that message to the rest of the world.”

On the Hōkūle‘a and her companion wa‘a (canoe), Hikianalia, ancient and modern technologies carry these truths across oceans and airwaves. Cameras and computers have proven less resilient than the well-trained crew, less able to withstand the constant salt spray and sun. “It’s hard work, but it affords us this incredible opportunity to be a part of something so important,” says Justyn Ah Chong, a director of photography for ‘Ōiwi, who helped document the Samoa to Aotearoa leg of the voyage. “What other production company could bring cultural knowledge, professional skills, and be on the wa‘a the whole time?”

The marriage of ancestral oceanic knowledge and cutting-edge communications technology onboard the sailing vessels shatter outdated conceptions of indigenous cultures as static “museum” cultures. Reflecting on his own changing perspective, Ah Chong says, “When I was younger, I kind of fell for the myth that the Hawaiian culture and language were dying. Working for ‘Ōiwi, I see people restoring ahupua‘a, working in the lo‘i, speaking the language, sailing around the world, and I know that it’s thriving.” Hōkūle‘a’s worldwide voyage—and ‘Ōiwi’s role in it—dares us to critique the failures of modernity and its relationship to the earth and to imagine the possibility of another way of living on this planet. “The values intrinsic in being island people, in terms of living together as a community with limited resources … that perspective is something that the whole world could learn from,” says Ah Chong.

It is hard to say with any kind of certainty that the world is ready to listen to the Hōkūle‘a’s message of mālama honua, or that ‘Ōiwi TV will succeed in its efforts to normalize the Hawaiian language and worldview here at home. But on any given morning in Maikiki, the sound of the pū calling from an inconspicuous house on Ke‘eaumoku Street is a sound of hope.

THE SHOW MUST

GO ON

OVER THREE DECADES, THE HAWAII INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL HAS BECOME THE STATE’S LARGEST ARTS EVENT, BRINGING WORLD-CLASS CINEMA—AND A BIT OF GLAMOUR—TO THE ISLES.

TEXT BY SONNY GANADEN | PORTRAIT IMAGES BY AARON YOSHINO

Myrna and Eddie Kamae giving the introduction of one of their documentaries at HIFF in 1988.

Together in the dark, watching a movie, remains one of our culture’s favorite ways to receive a story. For the last 34 years, the Hawaii International Film Festival, HIFF for short, has brought international storytellers to the islands and delivered a generation’s worth of narrative to the world. Despite the advent of film at our fingertips, attendance at the festival has not wavered.

There are as many approaches to running a film festival as there are film festivals. At least a half-dozen exist in Hawai‘i alone: the Waimea Ocean Film Festival, the Honolulu Rainbow Film Festival, the Maui Film Festival, the future Lanai Documentary Film Festival, to name a few. Internationally, there are thousands, some consisting of a weekend of obscure art house flicks for a few loyal attendees, others lasting weeks. HIFF, at 15 days (eleven days on O‘ahu and four on Big Island and Kaua‘i), is expansive in its breadth. Its organizers are dedicated to the mission of bringing the films of Hawai‘i, Asia, and Europe to the masses. It is among the oldest and most respected of its kind in the world, having made Honolulu one of the preeminent places to show film, alongside Berlin, Cannes, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Toronto, and Sundance.

Despite being renowned for selection and programming, with a catalog of films that now includes 178 unique showings, some of the films at HIFF are divisive. But even after viewing cinema bordering on smut or with a halfbrained narrative, audience members rarely feel ripped off. Part of the excitement of a film festival is its capacity to surprise. We purchase tickets knowing the crapshoot; knowing that on occasion, we might be transported to an alternate universe, a different time and place, another’s mind.

Amidst a labyrinth of mostly unoccupied commercial spaces between a Costco parking lot and the state’s largest movie multiplex is HIFF’s nerve center. It is here that the diverse team busily prepares for the annual event. Formerly an actual pineapple cannery, today, the area is composed of Dole Cannery, home to shops and chain fast-food joints, and the Regal Dole Cannery Stadium multiplex, where the majority

of HIFF’s films are shown.

I’m shown to the office of the festival’s director, Robert Lambeth, whose appearance belies his life as a man of vocational extremes. Anyone who can transition from the commune culture of Hawai‘i Island, where he managed the restoration of old theaters, to the highstrung money talk of London’s finance district, then land in Honolulu to run the state’s largest annual arts event, is a person who’s had more ambitious conversations than anyone outside politics. “You’re catching us in crunch time,” Lambeth says, as he and his predecessor and mentor Chuck Boller take a break to talk festival history. “I met Chuck years ago through theater restoration and worked with him for years prior to coming back. Part of the deal I struck when I came on board was that we need to get back to the neighbor islands,” Lambeth says. “And we’re doing our best. We don’t get nearly as much [financial support] as we once did from the counties, but we’re making it work. We’ve led the way in creating a system of independent theaters that would show art house films,” he says proudly.

Chuck Boller has remained integral to the festival as its director emeritus. Something about Boller’s tailored clothes, perfect diction, and bearded appearance give him the air of a man who runs a chocolate factory, which is not far off: To bring the magic of cinema to the masses, HIFF employs dozens of movie lovers who find themselves in more stable roles of administration. Like many festivals, HIFF is staffed in large part by “festival gypsies” (Boller’s term), the specialists who act as film shippers and programmers. “Nobody’s done more for Hawai‘i-Chinese relations than Chuck,” Lambeth tells me. He may be right. Boller is the sole foreign advisor for the Beijing Film Festival. In October, for the fourth annual China Night, HIFF flew in superstar actor Huang Xiaoming (who was in Los Angeles filming the latest John Woo film The Crossing) for a high-

end fundraiser. The event funded the scholarships of eight Hawai‘i-based film students to visit Shanghai and two select scholarships for students to participate in the American Pavilion of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.

In addition to student development, HIFF is introducing entirely new narratives to the local community through the New Frontiers program, which focuses on Islamic communities. For the filmmakers invited to the festival in 2014, the diaspora of Islamic communities is less compelling than the narratives of individuals surviving and finding love in the modern world. This year’s New Frontiers program featured Hasan Elahi, a multidisciplinary artist whose work on the surveillance state has made him internationally famous, and Desiree Akhavan, who uses IranianAmerican identity only as a starting point in her feature Appropriate Behavior, a romantic comedy making an argument against coming out as bisexual to immigrant parents. “I’m always surprised when I meet someone who hasn’t heard of HIFF,” says Boller. Considering the expanse of films, discussions, programs, and community development, Boller’s incredulity is no surprise.

***

In the early 1980s, Hollywood production and financing shifted toward juvenile mass appeal. In the wake of the gritty realism of the 1970s, multiplexes were built across America, and studios reconfigured to capitalize on the staggering commercial success of George Lucas’ Star Wars. At the same time, the art of filmmaking was being taught in universities around the world. Women, indigenous people, and American minorities were picking up the craft. The idea of a documentary as a nonfiction narrative became realized. Movies had proven to be capable of highminded abstraction or pulp narrative; as transformative forms of fiction or

forgettable camp trash. Film had conquered the world.

Art house cinema and festivals were the reaction to the commercialism and uniformity that were becoming normative. It was in this climate that HIFF was created in 1981, starting off as an academic affair with ambition. The back pages of the inaugural catalog were even left blank for notes. Jeanette Paulson Hereniko, the festival’s founding director, recalls the early days when HIFF was held at the East-West Center: “When we started, every movie was free, and we promoted discussion of content over production. The East-West Center’s mission is to promote cultural understanding—we just added the ‘through film’ part. And over the years I saw such transformative things.” In 1985, she invited Zhang Yimou, famed filmmaker and director of the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening and closing ceremonies, on his first trip out of China. In 1986, Hereniko oversaw the co-screening of American and Vietnamese films of war.

“We brought Roger [Ebert] to Maui in 1985,” she remembers. “It was his first time meeting Asian film critics, and he took his first trip to Japan as a result of that.” Ebert also met Donald Richie, the esteemed Western critic and scholar of Japanese film and culture in the late 20th century. That initial trip was transformative for Ebert, who returned annually. It is well known that Ebert was more than a critic. Embedded in his weekly discussions of film were countless tricks for creative writers, the wonder of which inspired those in all fields of English language: art criticism, history, critical theory, creative writing, law. It was in Hawai‘i that Ebert was introduced to a decades-long appreciation of Asian and Asian-American film. It was here that he also fell in love with his wife, Chaz, Lambeth says. In 2011, cancer and surgery robbed Ebert of the ability to speak. What happened next was followed religiously by those devoted to his work. His blog, which was previously the site for decades’ worth

Top: The staff that makes HIFF happen shown in the film festival’s headquarters at Dole Cannery. Bottom: Event photos from HIFF’s archives, which include appearances by Roger Ebert, John Ritter, Toni Collette, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Quentin Tarantino.

“Nobody’s done more for Hawai‘i-Chinese relations than Chuck,” Robert Lambeth says of director emeritus Chuck Boller.

of criticisms, evolved into a discussion far beyond movies. He used film to relate the personal to the political in ways that are nearly impossible to duplicate. He returned to Hawai‘i one last time in 2012 and presented a discussion of film through text repeated by a computerized voice and his wife. “I think theirs is a beautiful love story,” Boller says. “It’s still very raw for her. We’re very proud to carry on this legacy. In 2015, we’re launching the Ebert Young Critics Foundation,” Lambeth adds proudly.

From Hereniko’s to Lambeth’s tenure, the technological changes to moviewatching have been immense. HIFF’s 2003 catalog has a full-page ad from the now-failed video rental store that says, “Make it a Blockbuster night.” The keiki of contemporary Hawai‘i will never know the experience of perusing for, renting, and ultimately paying late fees to watch a movie. Kids aren’t missing much from the last days of celluloid, either. Once decried, digital projectors have become both normative in the industry and built to approximate the same dreamy brightness of light projected through film. Boller shows me how one works. “Most people have no idea this is what a movie looks like,” he says, showing me a hard drive in a yellow, padded plastic hazmat case. “A few years ago, we got a film from India in one of these that was filled with water,” he says. “Other times, we’ve had the wrong film in the case, or it wasn’t digitally set for the projector and we can’t show it. We figure something out.” Nary a hair on his face is misplaced at the thought of disaster. For film festival organizers, it’s all in a night’s work.

Considering its focus on underrepresented communities, HIFF has shown many works of ethnographic proselytism with scores to settle. It was in the last decade that the festival became the true showcase for Hawai‘i’s diversity, whether through unrehearsed local voices or non-American blockbusters. A favorite short of 2004 was Amasian: The Amazing Asian, written and directed by Gerard Elmore, the story of a local boy who ate radioactive rice, enabling him to graduate early from high school and fly. The superhero defended the planet from an asteroid by defeating his nemesis Wai‘anae Man, whose powers were derived from magical slippers. That same year, HIFF’s most popular showings were

from Korea, a nation whose filmmakers have proven their superiority in all things dramatic and violent. If there was an award for making viewers recoil in terror and awe, it would have gone to Old Boy by director Park Chan-wook, the now-classic Shakespearean thriller-horror-gangster movie that inspired Spike Lee to do a nearly shot-by-shot remake a decade later. In 2006, HIFF played the horror-social commentary The Host to a packed audience made up primarily of the vibrant Korean community in urban Honolulu that frequents the halfdozen video stores off Ke‘eaumoku Street.

For films whose subject matter is Hawai‘i, HIFF has been the site of controversy. In 2009, the biopic Princess Kaiulani was met by protestors who decried its working title Barbarian Princess, as well as its title role being portrayed by a non-Hawaiian. Leading actress Q’orianka Kilcher subsequently gave a teary press conference with community leaders and now leads a life of activism. Princess Kaiulani tied for “Best Feature,” as voted by HIFF audience members. The 2012 feature The Land of Eb by Andrew Williamson stars exceedingly talented Jonithen Jackson, who plays a man not far from himself: Jacob, a Marshallese head of household with a sense of humor and penchant for filmmaking, living in an immigrant community of farm workers on Hawai‘i Island’s fertile slopes. The Land of Eb is reminiscent of foreign movies that follow the indignities of ostracized communities, in this case highlighting the immigrant experience mere miles away from the resorts and milliondollar homes being developed in Kona. Lambeth reflects: “Film tells us about our own community.”

HIFF has brought Hawai‘i out of the cinematic provinces. And for emerging local filmmakers, it is an institution: The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Academy for Creative Media (ACM), which fosters many young filmmakers who eventually end up showing films at HIFF, began in 2004 after years of planning and outlining under the guidance and diligence of its founding director, locally born Hollywood producer and director Chris Lee. What began with just a few select classes grew course by course. Since 2008, ACM has offered a creative media major at the university, with tenured professors, hundreds of graduates,

and three tracts in digital narrative, gaming animation, and critical studies.

“What they’re learning is visual storytelling,” says professor Marlene Booth, who has been with the program since its inception. A filmmaker since the late 1970s, Booth transitioned to teaching when she moved to the islands in 2003. The documentary she co-produced with beloved educator, author, and filmmaker Kanalu Young, Pidgin: The Voice of Hawai‘i, received the “Audience Choice” award at HIFF in 2010; a free showing of the movie in the fall of 2009 during a sunset screening in Waikīkī remains among the most-attended viewings in the history of the festival. With the assistance of ACM students, Booth is working on a biographical documentary about her late co-producer, who was prolific despite disability, tentatively titled Kū Kanaka: Stand Tall. “Of course, we have our own showcase of films, but we depend on HIFF the way we depend on cultural institutions. And for the designated ACM night at the festival, it becomes the first—except for our own showcase—the first time our students venture outside. It’s important to our students to submit. It is scary to take your work outside the classroom, to persuade yourself that you can do that. For the kids who get stuff in, it’s wonderful for them.”

Over three decades, HIFF has become Hawai‘i’s largest community arts event. There is some irony in the glamour of film premieres and fundraisers that are necessary to bring forth stories that often discuss poverty, racism, and mortality. But “telling a compelling story,” says Booth, “is at the heart of what we do as filmmakers. It’s what people want and need.” Considering the thousands of movies that have shown at HIFF, the work of hundreds of festival organizers, and the countless individuals who have brought their works to isolated islands, what more could be asked of a film festival, of a community event, of art itself?

April

2014 marked the 20th anniversary of the murder of David Walden, an unsolved case that sent shockwaves through the local film and television industry.

DRIVING FACTORS

A BRIEFING ON CRIME IN HAWAI‘I’S FILM PRODUCTION INDUSTRY, WHICH CAME TO A CRESCENDO WITH A MURDER IN BROAD DAYLIGHT IN 1994.

TEXT BY JAMES DOOLEY COLLAGES BY LANDON TOM

It was 8:15 a.m. The sun had only been up for a little over two hours, and there was a light breeze at Pier 24, where David Walden, a Missourian in Hawai‘i on business, waited for the arrival of one of his company’s trucks. At that moment, a motorcycle carrying two men stopped near Walden, according to witnesses from the nearby Pine Garden Restaurant.

The motorcycle carried two riders, both estimated to be around 180 to 200 pounds and no more than 5 feet, 9 inches tall. One wore a white helmet with red triangular stripes and the other wore a black helmet. Both had on long-sleeved shirts and jeans. One of the riders approached Walden and

then shot him in the head with a handgun. It was April 16, 1994, a date still discussed by detectives of the Honolulu Police Department. His murderers were never found. On the 20th anniversary of the unsolved crime, Honolulu police and Walden’s family appealed for public assistance in finding those behind the killing. “It’s been 20 years of frustration and devastation,” Angela Whitworth, Walden’s daughter, said from her home in Missouri, where she and her three brothers were raised and still live. Whitworth was a 15-year-old high school student when her father was slain. “I’ve got kids now that I know would be so in love with my dad. But they never knew him. … What should have been wonderful times in my life—high school graduation, college graduation, my marriage, my children’s birth—he missed all those things. Twenty years later, and it still affects me so much.”

Walden was a recent arrival to the islands. The 51-year-old’s family company, Star Suites, Inc., was based in Kansas City, Missouri, but had expanded westward, supplying vehicles to movie and television productions on the West Coast and in Hawai‘i. Transportation services like those Walden provided are an integral part of the complex, behind-the-scenes machinery used to mount television shows and films shot on location in Hawai‘i and elsewhere around the world. Large trucks, trailers, and specialty vehicles

like “honey wagons”—mobile dressing rooms equipped with bathrooms—are needed to move people and materials between sets and location shoots. It is a business that had already seen its fair share of turf wars by the time Walden arrived. His homicide, whether industry-related or otherwise, cast shadows far and wide, setting off shock waves that rippled through Hawai‘i’s film and television industry, and are still quietly reverberating today.

At the time Walden arrived on the islands, the local movie and television business had already been roiled by violence. Three years earlier, in 1991, production trucks owned by two local companies had been deliberately destroyed by fire. Vehicles including a production van, camera trucks, and mobile dressing rooms were doused with a mixture of diesel fuel and gasoline and set on fire. The sabotage forced the two local companies, Auto Mastics, Inc. and Mokulua Consultants, Inc., out of business. And it left one company, George Cambra Movie Production Trucks, Inc., as the dominant player in the local market.

A lengthy FBI investigation of the arson case resulted in the conviction of George Cambra and Joseph “Joe Boy” Tavares. Both men were members of the Teamster

Union’s special production unit in Hawai‘i, a group of drivers created in the 1960s by Hawai‘i labor patriarch Arthur Rutledge, who was eulogized in the New York Times upon his death at 90 years old in 1997. Over the years, the membership roster of the production unit has included men with lengthy criminal records, several who have been identified by local and federal law enforcement as organized crime figures. (Rutledge explained that he gave such men jobs because he was trying to help rehabilitate them.)

In fact, arsonist Tavares was the half-brother of organized crime hit man Ronald Ching, another Teamster movie driver. Ching had worked on the original Magnum P.I. television series while simultaneously feeding a serious heroin addiction. In 1985, he admitted in Hawai‘i state court to participating in at least four notorious Hawai‘i contract killings: the 1970 slaying of State Senator Larry Kuriyama, who was shot to death at his home; the 1975 killing of Charles “Chuckers” Marsland III, son of Honolulu Prosecuting Attorney Charles Marsland Jr.; the 1978 murder of Drug Enforcement Administration informant Arthur K. Baker, who was buried alive in a beach dune; and the 1980 shooting of gambler-turned-police informant Robert Fukumoto at a bar. Ching’s only stated motive was that he committed these murders “at the request of others.”

With some 1.4 million members, the Teamsters Union is one of the largest and most influential labor organizations in the country. Members work in a variety of industries, from freight driving to sanitation—a broad array of people performing essential labor throughout North America. The production unit is a small group within a much larger organization meant to protect the rights of workers. Major Hollywood film and television production companies are contractually obligated to hire union drivers for their shows, paying substantial wages that can now sometimes run as high as $1,000 a day.

But a dark thread runs through the Hawai‘i production unit and the broader national Teamsters Union: a history of connections to organized crime. Longtime national Teamsters president, James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa (whose son now oversees the union) had close business and personal

ties to top Mafia figures. His 1975 disappearance is generally believed to have been an organized crime hit. (Coincidentally, at one time, one of the prime suspects in Hoffa’s disappearance, New Jersey mobster and Teamsters Union executive Anthony “Tony Pro” Provenzano, was locked up in a California federal prison with Hawai‘i hit man Ronald Ching. In 1981, Ching offered to share information he had about Provenzano with the FBI, but the offer was rejected by authorities, who doubted his trustworthiness.)

Members of the union are, overwhelmingly, law-abiding citizens. But ties between some Teamsters and the mob have been so longstanding and widespread that in 1989, the U.S. Department of Justice obtained a federal court order that allows close supervision of the union and forbids all Teamsters, including those in Hawai‘i, from “racketeering activities” or associations with any “criminal group.” In June of 2014, the union asked a federal judge in New York to end the government oversight. But a Department of Justice attorney said some supervision is still necessary. “Corrupt and undemocratic practices persist at all levels of the union,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Tara La Morte wrote in a letter to the court, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In 1999, a Honolulu federal grand jury heard evidence on the case of Walden’s murder, calling several production unit drivers to testify, but nothing came of it. Cambra and Tavares, convicted in the arson case, denied involvement, but accused each other of complicity in the homicide. About a month after Walden was killed, Cambra had been severely beaten by several production unit drivers. According to court records, Cambra told authorities that his assailants were trying to force him to give them ownership of a production vehicle. Tavares, on the other hand, claimed that a “meeting” was called because “Cambra was spreading rumors” that other production unit drivers had murdered Walden.

A new detective is working the case, and David Walden’s family remains hopeful that fresh information might be found. Local news outlets publicized the cold case in April 2014, and police asked the public for help. “There are people who know what happened, and we are hoping that someone will come forward,” said Yu. But asked if the recent publicity helped detectives, Yu said, “Nothing new was received.”

The Honolulu Star Bulletin said in 1999 that the arson case and Walden murder were “devastating blows” to Hawai‘i’s attempts to attract more movie and television activity. Donne Dawson, now head of the Hawai‘i Film Office, said that in the “dark days” following Walden’s death, industry and union officials joined together in an ad hoc effort to urge a cessation of violence on or around movie sets. And indeed, the level of movie industry-related violence has dropped precipitously since then (though in recent years, production unit members have been convicted of other crimes, mostly related to narcotics trafficking).

Like many states, Hawai‘i has enacted generous tax incentive packages to lure film and TV companies here, and Dawson said the industry places a premium on safe working conditions. “Productions out there have billions to spend and numerous choices of jurisdictions in which to spend those dollars,” she said. “We’ve got to give them every assurance that when they come to Hawai‘i, they’re going to have a successful, trouble-free experience.”

Dawson is optimistic about the future. “I’m not saying that it’s a perfect world that we’re living in now, but I definitely feel that we have come a long way since that much darker period.”

Federal officials now decline to discuss Walden’s murder. Police say they are continuing their investigation. “These cases are never forgotten,” said Honolulu Police Department spokesperson Michelle Yu.

Walden’s daughter, Angela Whitworth, who was 15 years old when her father was slain, still hopes someone will come forward with information about her father’s death.

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A Wrinkle in Time

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JOHN HOOK

STYLED BY ALY ISHIKUNI

ASSISTANT STYLING BY BAYEBETTE LACAR & MATT GONZALEZ

MAKEUP BY DULCE APANA , TIMELESS CLASSIC BEAUTY HAIR BY ASHLEE VALEROS , ASHLEE VALEROS HAIR DESIGNS

WHITNEY HAY & DREW SEIBERT , NICHE MODELS AND TALENT

LOCATION: THE NUTRIDGE ESTATE

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DREW: TOPMAN SHIRT, JACKET, AND PANTS, NORDSTROM; GLASSES, STYLIST’S OWN.

WHITNEY: VINTAGE DRESS, BARRIO VINTAGE; SHINOLA WATCH, T GALLERIA.

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HAWAII

THIS REINVIGORATED PARTNER OF OUR RELUCTANT ISLAND CHAIN AT LEAST BRINGS A LITTLE THRILL TO THE RELATIONSHIP.

TEXT BY SONNY GANADEN

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MARK GHEE LORD GALACGAC

To the chagrin of some and the pride of others, no form of modern entertainment has brought Hawai‘i to the world like the TV drama Hawaii Five-0. The original series ran from 1968 to 1980, then was remade and rebranded, debuting again in 2010, and has since become an island institution. Each week, on average, more than 9 million U.S. viewers tune in to Five-0’s Friday night CBS slot. The new series plays in numerous countries, from Germany to Japan, and re-runs have already begun. A decade ago, you knew your neighborhood was gritty when you saw it on Dog the Bounty Hunter. Now it’s if the Five-0 crew shuts down your cul-de-sac to film a drug bust. Several hundred local film professionals work on the show throughout its shooting season. Numerous local businesses have received a boost in tourist traffic after being mentioned. And for the now thousands of people who’ve acted as extras, it’s the longest $100 day they’ve ever worked; most wind up sharing dry pretzels from craft services while waiting for their mere seconds of screen time.

In the intervening decades between the two shows, the iconic, symphonic

sweep of music composed by Morton Stevens simultaneously became the theme song for Hawaii Five-0’s opening sequence and de rigueur for local marching bands. The original show was syndicated around the world, searing as much of an image in the minds of viewers of police and thieves in Hawai‘i as it did white sandy beaches, swaying palm trees, and surfing locals. The new exploits of the off-the-books detective team take much inspiration from late1990s fast-paced crime dramas and Michael Bay-style cinematography. But like the old series, the new Five-0 plays like an inside joke for locals, who are quick to point out the show’s glaring inaccuracies about island life: They put a shave ice stand at the end of the pier? Who wears an Armani suit to Waimānalo Beach Park? Who can speed through downtown at 4 p.m. on a Friday to disable a bomb?

The answers are in modern TV drama, whose scripts are, arguably, more concerned about ratings and show survival than encompassing stories. Of all the fiction, nothing beats the technology in the Five-0 control room. It’s LOL funny for actual state workers. The heads-up displays, immediate access to information, and pleasant lighting are pure fantasy in a place where county workers clock in at 7:45 a.m. and do things like press CTRL + F9 to access hard drives in order to forward mileage docs to the ladies in Fiscal. The only place in Honolulu where such technology is actually displayed is the IBM building in Kaka‘ako, where a developer highlights the proximity of new condominiums to tourist attractions. The state worker who looks like she finished a month of sculpt yoga and master cleansing while wearing Manolo Blahnik heels is, in fact, a unicorn.

The series’ storylines offer some real doozies: a murder at Pipeline that leads the detectives to a North Shore heavy hitter (played by Kala Alexander,

reprising his role as menacing local) who eventually leads us to the killer, a greedy real estate developer; the terrorist-style neck collar bomb fitted on poor Chin Ho Kelly (Daniel Dae Kim) in the middle of downtown Honolulu; and some gems of knowledge ripped straight from the headlines: “Those girls wanted to ride those waves as long as they could,” Kono Kalakaua (Grace Park) says of a bikini-clad gang who robbed tourists on trolleys. “Yet that love turned them into criminals, and their endless summer is over.”

To say that the show is corny nonsense is missing the point. Hawaii Five-0 has become part of local culture with historical ties to the community: a bust of Jack Lord (who played the original series’ leading man, Steve McGarrett, and spent his retirement and much of his savings in the local arts scene) now faces the parking lot of Kahala Mall and is usually adorned with a lei from an old fan. Since 2010, the red carpet events for the season premieres, held on the sand facing Kapiolani Park, are as close as most local people will get to quasi-celebrity status without flying to Vegas. To see throngs of local fans abutting the red carpet, leaning in for a chance to see Alex O’Loughlin and his new bride, surfing celebrity Malia Jones, emerge from a tinted Escalade like they’re at Cannes, illustrates how the show is more than an outsiders’ portrayal of lived Hawai‘i. Take the show for its violence, half-hearted dialogue, token nods to the host culture by naming episodes in Hawaiian, but it’s as close as we may ever come to showing the world what it’s like to live in Hawai‘i—for now, at least.

CULTURE INFLUX

TRUE GRIT

THE WILD WEST OF FILM COMPETITIONS, SHOWDOWN IN CHINATOWN HAS INSPIRED HAWAI‘I AUTEURS FOR A DECADE.

TEXT BY CARMICHAEL DOAN

IMAGE BY JONAS YUN

One of the more prominent showcases of Hawai‘i’s independe nt film scene, Showdown in Chinatown is a merciless crucible of chaos and redemption. With highly unusual guidelines, it has been helping to introduce and promote high-quality independent films for nearly a decade. Predicated on improvisation, creativity, and sheer endurance, it is the cinematic equivalent of the Ironman triathlon.

Founded in 2005 by Torry Tukuafu, Showdown was initially conceived in the minds of Lost staffers and cameramen as a challenge between industrious young film industry workers, held in Honolulu’s Chinatown. The premise was simple: The best seven-minute film, created in just 24 hours, wins a round of drinks. It has undergone numerous changes over the last 10 years, becoming a bi-monthly event pivoting around 24-hour to 72-hour challenges with elements like themes or randomly chosen objects that must be incorporated into the films. What began as a playful professional rivalry between industryproven veterans has since transformed into a chaotic marathon of writing, filming, and editing for fledgling film auteurs, aimed at discovering what is possible under tight deadlines and unexpected obstacles.

While this scenario would seem to lend itself to disjointed and poorly developed films, Showdown has proven otherwise. By creating an atmosphere of mentorship, with industry professionals like Evangeline Lilly, Daniel Dae Kim, and director Jack Bender providing insight during the judging of the films, Showdown has become a vibrant brain trust in which failure is met with encouragement instead of

Cyrina Hadad, shown in The Great Star Theatre in San Francisco, is expanding the shortfilm competition Showdown in Chinatown to the Bay Area in 2015.

jeers and popcorn tossing. Behind it all is Cyrina Hadad, who became a co-owner and the face of Showdown in 2008, starting out as a friendly fan in 2005. While Tukuafu remains involved, Hadad has become the most visible and impassioned voice.

Heading both production and marketing direction, Hadad espouses the virtues of hacker subculture in everything she does. With a giddy laugh, she waxes altruistic on the evolution of technology in film. And she is an absolute tornado of optimism when it comes to the impact the Showdown has had on competitors. “Showdown allows people to express themselves creatively in a competitive outlet,” she says. “Everyone grows in this setting.”

The unorthodox format of Showdown is unique in that it does not follow your typical shoot-and-submit film festival timelines. This is not Sundance. There are no slopes to be raced down between macchiatos and microbreweries. Designed to test the creative capabilities of its competitors, the guidelines are set to stretch each of the filmmakers in a myriad of ways.

And it has paid off. Hadad recalls one filmmaker, Robert Campbell, whose first films comprised of crude jokes and other such boyishly silly themes. But as time progressed, Campbell’s films evolved, and he even went on to produce the feature film Ecila, which was shown and lauded at the Hawai‘i International Film Festival.

With the film challenge approaching its tenth anniversary, Hadad has been working closely with Showdown’s interactive

director, Aisis Chen, to incorporate innovative technology. “We are now moving forward into combining visual storytelling with trans-media technologies,” says Hadad. “We are joining forces with hackers, makers, and students in Hawai‘i.” The future, she notes, will be in holographic projections, gestural interactivity, and other integrated technological advances that enhance live performances. In an effort to highlight these changes, Hadad organized a high-tech extravaganza for the 2014 Showdown in Chinatown Championships, which took place in November. Alongside the films, an interactive visual display delivered a 3D experience by combining elements of water and various light sources. While these technologies are rarely utilized in actual cinema, Hadad believes that they are the future of film and media, and that the hybridization of the audience experience is imminent. This means a more immersive experience, in which a viewer sees a film as well as experiences it with other senses. Think Disney California Adventure Park’s Soarin’ Over California simulator ride.

Through its decade of evolution, Showdown has remained rooted in challenging and inspiring young filmmakers. Utilizing the unconventional concept of chaos as a catalyst to foster brilliance, Showdown proves that jaw-dropping results are not only common in this setting, but that amidst bloodshot eyes and sleepless editing sessions, madness creates masterpieces.

For more information, visit showdowninchinatown.com.

DOWN THE PATH OF COURAGE

TEN YEARS IN THE MAKING, TIM SAVAGE’S NEW FILM, UNDER THE BLOOD-RED SUN , REVIVES THE 1994 NOVEL BY GRAHAM SALISBURY.

TEXT BY CARMICHAEL DOAN

IMAGE BY JOHN HOOK

Tim Savage is an ardent advocate for stories that inspire. He is a storyteller, a dreamer, and a believer in the good that is possible in everyone. As a director and producer, he brought these ideals to the silver screen in 2014 with a movie based on Graham Salisbury’s 1994 novel Under the Blood-Red Sun

A decade in the making, Savage’s film premiered in September at the WWII Valor in the Pacific National Monument at Pearl Harbor, an appropriate location given the film’s storyline. At its core, Under the Blood-Red Sun is a coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old Japanese boy caught between worlds following the attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Taking place in the incendiary environment of racial tension that was O‘ahu post-December 7, Under the Blood-Red Sun is a story that is steeped in the history of Hawai‘i and its evolution into the melting pot of racial diversity that it is today. While the setting is uniquely local, Savage is quick to assure moviegoers that the story is a universal one.

“I like to tell stories that give people hope,” says Savage. While most people might recognize the director from his commercial work, including high-profile advertisements for First Hawaiian

Tim Savage, director of Under the Blood-Red Sun , shown at Hawai‘i’s Plantation Village in Waipahu, where much of the movie’s filming took place.

Bank, his experience goes far beyond television. He is an awardwinning producer and director who has won fans over with work on locally shot and produced movies such as Lemon Tree Billiards House (1996) and Goodbye Paradise (1991), both of which have been featured in film festivals in Hawai‘i as well as in showcases on the mainland. What started as a single communications elective at Stanford for Savage, who originally set out to be a doctor, has evolved into a career in film spanning two decades.

While Under the Blood-Red Sun is a story filled with hostility and paranoia, its underlying theme is one of redemption and acceptance. Through his journey overcoming fear and prejudice, the young protagonist exemplifies perseverance and how it manifests itself within us all. It’s a story that exudes Savage’s hopeful ideology. It’s a story about finding your path and having the courage to walk it.

Under the Blood-Red Sun is available for rent or download at underthebloodredsun.com.

REWRITING THE SCRIPT

GORDY HOFFMAN, BROTHER OF THE LATE PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN, INSPIRES STUDENTS TO WRITE THROUGH STRUGGLES.

TEXT BY LIZA SIMON

IMAGE BY JOHN HOOK

For those of us who yearn to use the biggest screen of all to tell our most personal stories, Gordy Hoffman offers blockbuster-sized support. Hoffman, who scored a Sundance Film Festival award as the screenwriter of the 2002 quirky feature film Love Liza, has become best known—and some would say beloved—as the founder of the BlueCat Screenplaywriting Competition, which is dedicated to discovering and nurturing novice writers. He routinely crisscrosses the country to teach screenwriting workshops, and in September, he landed in Hawai‘i as a visiting instructor for a Pacific New Media workshop at University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Here, he demoed his hale and hearty style of teaching the art of screenwriting, lobbing writing exercises at the mixed bag of students before him, using zany humor to prod the shiest students into sharing. He urged everyone to face their demons—a prerequisite, he said, to letting creativity rip. And he didn’t avoid his own demons either, candidly discussing the loss of his brother, Academy Award-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died last year of a drug overdose, and his struggle to get through the darkness and get back to scriptwriting. Here, he offers a font of wisdom for the inner screenwriter in all of us.

Why teach?

I love being of service. I end up telling people about things I don’t necessarily follow until teaching makes me more

Gordy Hoffman, who was recently in Hawai‘i to teach a Pacific New Media workshop, encourages budding screenwriters to face their demons in finding sources of inspiration.

conscious of it. It’s also exciting for me to help those [unknown scriptwriters] who have something to offer the world.

You had a big turnout for your Pacific New Media workshop. Is it like this in your other screenwriting workshops?

Yes, and it’s not just me. Movies have long been the most popular form of storytelling entrenched in our culture, but now it has become a much more democratic form of storytelling. With the Internet, people can read scripts and find scriptwriting software. And then there is Kickstarter making it possible [to raise the money], and that is a whole other matter.

What do you notice as the most common obstacles for novice scriptwriters?

People shy away from more difficult emotional sequences in a story because they are ultimately more challenging and stressful. I also feel that people rely on methods expressed in books and blogs and chase what they think will be successful instead of telling a story that they really have a passion for.

You seem intent on getting students to face their own vulnerabilities as a basis for scriptwriting. Discuss this approach.

First, you’re going to be writing about dramatic conflict, because most movies are rooted in that. Audiences want to see highstakes, complicated conflict, and those situations tend to be stressful and taxing to have in mind [as a writer]. Then there is the fact that writing is already an emotional, strenuous activity. On top of this, there come life events. You lose somebody, like I did. It’s going to impact your ability to show up for the writing. Your emotional fitness will be

challenged, but this is normal. About the information I impart as a teacher … often it’s nothing other than practical stuff—how to solve things creatively through the act of writing.

In your own writing, do you find yourself reflecting on the world’s troubles—the wars, the violence, the fear?

No. More than anything we want catharsis. We want to see problems resolved. It is not a satisfying experience to sit through a story that says life really sucks and then your house bursts into flames. We want to see some sort of order and justice, and how and why life is worth living. Because when a house burns down, people pick up the pieces and find a place to sleep the next night. That is the world we want to affirm.

This is your first time teaching in Hawai‘i. Can you share some of your impressions?

One thing that is clear is that there is not an organized community around filmmaking here. It seems a lot of people are attracted to it, but it’s a bit disparate. Other cities have a more organized community, and so there is a channel through which support and information is passed for filmmakers. Yet this place is so much more cinematically beautiful and has an energy unique to the fabric of the country.

Any impressions of the work of your workshop participants you care to share?

There was one I might expect to see at the Academy Awards someday. It’s possible. She really has something. It can happen anywhere. There is no monopoly on talent in any group or any place.

For PNM’s full schedule of classes, visit outreach.hawaii.edu/pnm.

IN THE WRITERS’ ROOM

HOW DANA LEDOUX MILLER GOT HER BIG BREAK WITH AARON SORKIN’S HBO DRAMA THE NEWSROOM .

TEXT BY MATTHEW DEKNEEF

IMAGE BY NICK JOSEPH

“LA has similarities to Hawai‘i,” 32-year-old screenwriter Dana Ledoux Miller says of the islands she called home for nearly a decade. “The weather doesn’t change more or less, you can still get ramen.” Then, like a true disillusioned local is quick to clarify, “I mean, it’s no Sumo Ramen.”

Ledoux Miller, who recently found success on the writing staff of Aaron Sorkin’s HBO drama The Newsroom, might’ve gotten her big break in Los Angeles, but it was the seven years she spent on O‘ahu riding the wave of Hawai‘i’s film and television boom that got her where she is. A graduate of the Academy for Creative Media at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, Ledoux Miller did everything from interning on Lost and Chuck Mitsui’s indie feature One Kine Day to serving as a production assistant on The Descendants and the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

It was on that last gig that she set sail with the Black Pearl to Los Angeles to help complete the final half of shooting at Universal Studios. Her degree in hand, a hard-earned shortlist of industry connections, and some momentum on her side, that’s when Ledoux Miller committed herself to a saying she’d heard so many times on Hawai‘i’s beaches: Go big or go home. She decided to stay in Hollywood.

After just a year of more production work—a schmaltzy Lifetime movie here, a straight-to-DVD Will Ferrell comedy there—something big happened: HOMECOMING

“Suddenly I had an agent, I was in the writers union, I’m in a room with Aaron Sorkin,” screenwriter Dana Ledoux Miller recalls of her experience working on The Newsroom

She scored a seat in one of the most highly sought-after writers’ rooms in television. What started as yet again more production assistant work, this time on the pilot of The Newsroom, became an opportunity to apply to become a writers’ assistant for the HBO drama. Ledoux Miller submitted a writing sample, met with the series’ producers, and, in a transition that was more of a jump cut than a gradual fade, she was hired. “Suddenly I had an agent, I was in the writers union, I’m in a room with Aaron Sorkin”—even after working with him for two seasons, she still whispers his name, as if she herself can’t believe it—“it all happened so fast.”

Working closely with Sorkin on the first two seasons of The Newsroom, Ledoux Miller picked up a few notes or two about writing—how can you not? “So much of what I learned from him isn’t about formatting or structure,” she says. “He taught me to trust my instincts.”

While she may have sharpened her technique and craft in Sorkin’s writers’ room, the most formative years of her life were spent on O‘ahu. It’s where she became involved in the local arts scene as the community theatre director of HEARTS (Hawaii Education for the Arts), where she cites ACM teachers such as cinematographer Anne Misawa as an inspiration, and where she also met her husband, a lifelong Kailua boy.

Today they live in Silver Lake (think LA’s equivalent to the hip streets of Kaimukī). Ledoux Miller just finished serving as the executive story editor for Narcos, an upcoming Netflix series about notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar. While that films in Columbia, she

continues to work on a few other personal projects.

“I just love telling stories, especially those stories that aren’t being told, but need to be,” Ledoux Miller says. Like so many ACM alums, she credits its program for helping Pacific Islanders like herself get their stories out to a broader audience. “Yes, there are big productions that roll through Hawai‘i and hire local film crews, those are great opportunities, which I benefited from,” she acknowledges, “but the exciting things happening in Hawai‘i are happening because local people are learning new ways to tell their stories through film and television.”

There are many things she misses from the islands—being able to jump in the ocean for five minutes just because you can, the way people always wave “thank you” when driving, Keneke’s plate lunches—but its that shared sense of community and urgency she remembers most.

“I’m in LA now, but I hope that one day I can be a part of that tradition again,” she says.

“My father is from Samoa and so much of my family’s history isn’t documented on paper or in history books. There’s a rich culture and tradition that is often misunderstood or misrepresented in popular culture and I hope that I can play a role in giving those stories a voice.”

STARRING: STARFRUIT

THIS DELICATE FRUIT HOLDS CENTER STAGE IN A HEARTY ESCABECHE

CONCOCTED BY CHEF JOHN MEMERING.

TEXT BY ANNA HARMON

IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

Starfruit, unlike its poor companions ‘ulu and jackfruit, is a beauty. A quick chop through its waxy, crisp skin, and you have a perfectly shaped star, light yellow and full of nectar. The fruit, however, is easily bruised and quick to turn, and the bagfuls delivered by generous neighbors or family too often end up, still half-full, garbage-side. But no longer! Chef John Memering of Cactus Bistro in Kailua has the answer: a spicy escabeche (“pickled,” in Spanish) starring starfruit.

Memering gets his starfruit nearly the same way as most residents of the islands. “You need some of this?” he says, summing up a typical text from the Grandes, a couple that farms a small parcel of land in Waimānalo called Kakalina Farms. Farmers and friends unload the fruit throughout the season that runs from September through April, when it also can be found at Chinatown stands and in grocers’ produce sections.

“It used to be that starfruit was one of those bourgeois garnish fruits that French chefs would put on top of a fruit cart,” Memering says. But it deserves so much more—it is rich in antioxidants, Vitamin C, and potassium, and low in sugar. Originating in Southeast Asia, where it’s often stewed with cloves and sugar, the fruit can also be eaten fresh, sautéed, dried, tossed into a salad, or juiced. In the case of Memering’s quick-pickled* creation, the brine can even be used as the acidic element of a vinaigrette. His creation pairs well with everything from seared ahi to a chicken sandwich. “I like this because you get the flavor and also the beauty of it too,” he says.

The bourgeois garnish fruit of French chefs no more, starfruit can be paired with just about anything when made into a spicy escabeche, as shown here.

For a simple caipirinha cocktail featuring starfruit juice, visit fluxhawaii.com.

*Most commercial pickles use fermentation, with end results that can last years on a shelf if sealed. On the other hand, a quick pickle creates a similar vinegary taste but can be eaten in as soon as 24 hours. However, its end product only lasts four to six months.

KAKALINA FARMS STARFRUIT “ESCABECHE”

YIELDS : 1/2 gallon

REQUIRE : 1 64-ounce canning jar with lid and band that have been washed and sterilized; plastic wrap.

INGREDIENTS

STARFRUIT MIXTURE:

3 lbs. fresh starfruit, washed and cut into 1/4” slices (seeds can be left in)

1 large red Fresno chili pepper, thinly sliced, with seeds intact

1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced and placed in ice water to cover

3 Tbsp. Kosher salt

2 Tbsp. Agave nectar or local honey

PICKLING BRINE:

1 c. fresh lime juice

1 c. cider vinegar

1 c. water

2 Tbsp. Kosher salt

PREPARATION:

PICKLING BRINE CONTINUED:

1/2 c. + 2 Tbsp. Agave nectar or local honey

3 Tbsp. Chipotle chili in adobo, finely chopped (found in most Mexican sections of grocery stores)

2. tsp. cumin seed, toasted and ground

1 tsp. coriander seed, toasted and ground

1 tsp. dried oregano, preferably Mexican variety

1/2 tsp. ground allspice

3 cloves garlic, finely chopped

QUICK-PICKLING DIRECTIONS:

1. Strain the onion thoroughly and combine with starfruit mixture. Working in batches, carefully add mixture to the canning jar until full, making sure not to pack too tightly. Add any remaining liquid to pickling brine.

2. Pour pickling brine into jar until fruit mixture is covered. Close jar and turn upside-down and sideways several times. This releases any air pockets.

3. Remove lid and pour in remaining brine until it reaches the bottom thread of the jar’s mouth. Tent a single piece of plastic wrap over mouth of jar and screw lid on tightly.

4. Place jar in a dark, somewhat cool place for 24 hours, then refrigerate. Replace plastic wrap every time the jar is opened to prevent lid from corroding.

5. The brine recipe should result in almost a cup extra. Keep this and continue to add to the jar as you remove the mixture.

This escabeche lasts four to six months if properly stored. To do so, keep starfruit mixture submerged in the brine, or mold may develop and ruin the batch.

Cactus is located in Kailua at 767 Kailua Rd. For more information, visit cactusbistro.com.

Toss sliced starfruit and chili with salt and agave nectar. (This is considered “curing,” removing excess moisture and sealing the outer flesh so that it stays crunchy). Refrigerate for 30–45 minutes.

Next, combine all pickling brine ingredients, except for the water, in a bowl. Put water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Carefully pour boiling water over brine ingredients and stir until salt has dissolved. Let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes.

SURF BOUTIQUE

TEXT BY ANNA HARMON

SORIL

For some, surfing is about grace; for others, it’s about athleticism. But at the end of the day, what matters most is style. How you carve, float, or walk the nose. In such a sport, the tiniest details can define the way you feel in and out of the water. But these days, it can seem like surfing has been usurped by the very companies-turnedconglomerates that started out as the little guys selling boardshorts out of their trunks. Here we present eight local companies that remain committed to detail and true to their inspirations—whether it’s honoring the Hawaiian roots of the sport or keeping the whole family involved.

STRAW HAT MAKAI

These impeccable wetsuits made with Japanese rubber are blindstitched (so no seams are exposed) and glued by hand at a factory in Japan that’s been perfecting the craft for 45 years.

Shown: women’s 2mm wetsuit, $260; men’s 2mm tank top wetsuit, $170; bag, $80; all available at Hawaiian South Shore surf shop.

IMAGE BY HAREN

WONDERLAND HONOLULU

Jess Shedlock got her start in Honolulu with repurposed, vintage, patch-pocketed denim cutoffs. Since then, she’s expanded her line and moved along to Los Angeles, but she continues to pay homage to her island origins, in this case with a light surf/ yoga legging to protect those gams from the sun.

Shown: Pakala Surf legging, $30; available at wonderlandhonolulu.com

BRLS

For the founders of BRLS, GoPro mounts just weren’t up to snuff, so they created their own. Assembled on O‘ahu with materials made in the United States, these mounts feature suction cups that don’t use adhesive (so they will work again and again) and are made with curved surfaces in mind, from surfboard to canoe.

Shown: GoPro mount with reusable suction cups, $49.95; available at select surf boutiques and brlshawaii.com

SALVAGE PUBLIC

“Designed by Hawaiians,” these shirts are printed and hand-dyed in Kaka‘ako on buttery soft shirts made of organic cotton grown in the U.S. The indigo, a signature of the line, is even cultivated in Hawai‘i.

Shown: Pule for Surf shirt, $68; And The Rest Is Salt And Sea Foam shirt, $68; available at select surf boutiques and salvagepublic.com

OF ONE SEA

Owner and designer Maryam Fortuna was inspired to start Of One Sea by a song she sings with her children. Her line, appropriately, encompasses the whole family, including these boardshorts for growing boys (which are also made for grown men), and towels handcrafted in Turkey of organic cotton or bamboo for those hanging out beachside.

Shown: kids four-way stretch retro surf trunks, $45; indigo multi-stripe bamboo Turkish towel, $50; available at select boutiques and ofonesea.com

ISLAND FIN DESIGN

Founder Steve Mock has been making surfboard fins since 1979, and his work is easily recognized by his signature stripe. Today, he handcrafts a wide variety of fins, including the aloha print inlay model, at the Waialua Sugar Mill.

Shown: Leeward fin in matte aloha, $78; Nui fin in matte yellow and black, $80; Barracuda fin in white and blue, $72; available at various locations and islandfindesign.com

QUALITY PEOPLES

What started as a trans-oceanic artistic collaboration became Quality Peoples, with half of the duo based on the North Shore of O‘ahu. Forget the high-tech materials— these throwback shorts are dip-dyed and made in the U.S. with 100 percent cotton. Shown: Pupukea dip-dye shorts, $125; available at select surf boutiques and qualitypeoples.com

NINJA SURFBOARDS

“I wanted something small enough to fit in anyone’s trunk but that still had decent float. On a small day, you can take the fins off and go bodyboarding,” says Alex Nguyen about Ninja’s creamsicle-shaped boards. He, along with three others, dream up, shape, and glass the Ninja Surfboard creations.

Shown: Creamsicle surfboard, 4’0” (available from 3’11”-5’2”), custom pricing; learn more via Instagram @ninjasurfboards.

TAKING TO THE STREET

THE MERRY BAND OF MEN THAT MAKE UP STREETLIGHT CADENCE WANT TO PLAY FOR YOU.

TEXT

BY

NAOMI TAGA

IMAGES BY JONAS MAON

One could say that an unfortunate punch to violinist Jonathon Franklin’s face while street performing in Waikīkī put into motion the events that would connect the four young gentlemen who make up indie folk band Streetlight Cadence. After being assaulted and robbed, Franklin was convinced he should give up street performances, but when accordionist Jesse Shiroma, a black-belt martial artist, answered Franklin’s call for musicians on Craigslist, the street-leery violinist knew he could rest easy. Along with Chaz Umamoto (guitar) and Brian Webb (cello), they form a rare breed of classically trained performers who take to the streets of Waikīkī and Chinatown to peddle their musical fare. With whimsical vocals accompanied by theatrical performances, the group has talent to match their

The indie folk foursome Streetlight Cadence continues to take to the streets of Chinatown and Waikīkī to hone their theatrical performances.

unabashed personas. Since forming in 2009, they’ve ventured off-island for two mainland tours, were selected as one of the top 25 bands for Hard Rock’s worldwide music competition, and are working on a second fulllength album, set to be released in early 2015. Their success, however, has not come without hard work. Umamoto ticks off a list of the band’s goals for their East Coast tour: “Meet a couple hundred bands, 10 people from the music industry, book 10 gigs, make $200 a day, and grow 500 Facebook fans by the end of the trip.” Despite all their planning, the music industry has proven to be a tough place, which they learned firsthand while on tour. “I was shocked that we can go to strangers who will be totally receptive, but the music industry, where you think you’d get listened too, you get the coldest shoulder,” says Shiroma.

For all members, Streetlight Cadence has become their livelihoods and full-time commitments. They view their band like a start-up company, something that is sustainable despite limited resources or time. This requires some creativity, too. For example, when they discovered that in Austin, Texas, the live-music capital of the world, it is illegal to be a street performer, they found other avenues to get their music heard through a concept they dubbed “music bombing.” If they couldn’t play outside, they headed indoors, something they still do today. They traveled up and down the block, and no matter what type of business they came upon—café, toy store, boutique, dentist, office—they’d ask to play

a song. “It’s funny, the really hip places are often the ones who turn us down,” says Shiroma. “Then we’d go to the ritziest restaurant and think there’s no way. But after introducing ourselves with no context and saying, ‘We’d love to play a song for your staff and audience,’ there’s a pause of shock and then, ‘Yes!’ Then they buy our CDs.”

Despite their popularity so far, the foursome remain focused, determined to conquer everything a successful business requires (those cumbersome details like marketing, distribution, budgeting, etc.) in order to pursue their end goal: “We typically just want one thing: to be great musicians,” says Umamoto. Despite the places they’ll go, Streetlight Cadence is proud to be from the streets, and even prouder that they are still there.

Streetlight Cadence’s EP “After the War” is available now on iTunes. You can find them performing on the streets of Waikīkī and Chinatown and at cafés and lounges around Honolulu. To keep up with the band, visit streetlightcadence.com.

REUNITED (AND IT SOUNDS SO GOOD)

AMY HĀNAIALI‘I AND WILLIE K

RELEASE THEIR FIRST ALBUM IN 10 YEARS.

TEXT BY SARAH RUPPENTHAL

IMAGE COURTESY OF ISLAND SOUL ENTERTAINMENT

As I sit down to chat with Amy Hānaiali‘i Gilliom and Willie K, it’s clear they are in their element. Seated side-by-side, the two recipients of multiple Nā Hōkū Hanohano awards and Grammy nominations look right at home surrounded by the sleek equipment and audio gear that fills Willie’s Wailuku recording studio.

Hānaiali‘i, who’s just returned from a weeklong trip to the Big Apple (she represented her family at a Hawaiian Room reunion at New York City’s legendary Lexington Hotel), is the furthest thing from jet-lagged. She greets me effervescently, as though we are old friends. After a hug and a handshake, Willie relaxes into his chair, and soon his smooth voice fills up the room as he tells me about his tour bus adventures with Hānaiali‘i back in 2004. He leans over to her, a broad smile across his face. “Remember the time we went to the Walmart in Utah?” he asks, chuckling at the memory. “Yes,” Amy says, grinning back at him. “It was Provo, Utah. There was nowhere to eat, so we bought a crockpot and made comfort food for everyone on the bus.”

Peals of laughter bounce off the soundproofed walls as the two friends reminisce. There’s a palpable sense of buoyancy in the room, and it’s

Grammy nominated Amy Hānaiali‘i Gilliom and Willie K are back after a 10year hiatus with 14 all-new tracks on their new album Reunion.

easy to see why: This celebrated musical duo just released their first collaborative album in November after a 10-year hiatus. Appropriately, it’s titled Reunion.

“In Reunion, we step back in the past,” Hānaiali‘i says, “while stepping ahead of ourselves into the future.” Merging the past, present, and future is a fitting theme for Reunion, as the musical project is proof that this type of synergistic talent never grows stale, no matter how much time has passed. For the diehard fans who have been eagerly awaiting this album, Willie assures them it’s worth the wait. “It’s the Hawaiian music album you’ll never expect to happen,” he says. “It will take a whole weekend for your brain to get around it.”

He’s right. While there’s a certain familiarity to it, Reunion features a lineup of brand new songs infused with new sounds, ranging from the toe-tapping beat of “Tequila Senorita” to the introspective lyrics of the ballad “Hawaiian Man.” You’ll hear hints of country, rock, gospel, rhythm and blues—and everything in between. Reunion is undeniably diverse (so much so, in fact, that both Hānaiali‘i and Willie describe it as a “variety show”), and no two songs sound the same. “This album will take you on a journey,” Willie says. “It’s not on the plane of tradition; it’s a ride … and it’s one of my favorite pieces of work.”

Cutting a record is no easy task, but the duo says the most challenging part of the process was deciding which songs to include on Reunion. The pair spent the last year composing and writing lyrics for a total of 52 songs, which had to be whittled down to just 14 tracks. But rest assured, the leftovers won’t go to waste. “Our next album will have more of a world sound,” Hānaiali‘i says enigmatically. I immediately pounce, asking if there’s another reunion in the pipeline. “Oh, yeah,” Willie says. “This is just the beginning.”

Reunion is available on iTunes and through Mountain Apple Company at shop. mountainapplecompany.com. For more information, visit amyandwillie.com.

FLUX IN NYC EVENT RECAP

IMAGES BY JOHN HOOK

We were honored to host the presentation of Reyn Spooner’s Hawaiian Indigo and spring/summer 2015 collections during New York Fashion Week on September 10 at The DL Rooftop. From lei from The Hawaiian Lei Company for industry insiders and press to a Roberta Oaks gift bag filled with goodies from Honolulu Cookie Co., Hawaiian Bath & Body, Mauna Loa, and Get Salty, the event truly brought the spirit of aloha to New York City.

DINE OUT

WITH STARWOOD HOTELS AND RESORTS HAWAII

From fine dining to exotic cocktails, you’ll find an eclectic mix of cuisines to delight your taste buds on O‘ahu at Starwood Hotels and Resorts Hawaii.

RUMFIRE AT SHERATON WAIKIKI

Known for its trendy interior, lively entertainment, and stunning views of Diamond Head, RumFire serves up local favorites with sizzling new twists. Introducing Spiked Afternoon Tea, RumFire “burns up” the traditional

afternoon tea and features bite-sized sliders, delectable desserts, and variations of teainspired cocktails.

LEGENDARY

MAI TAI BAR AT THE ROYAL HAWAIIAN

Setting the stage for world-class romance and elegant relaxation, the legendary Mai Tai Bar at The Royal Hawaiian has been the destination for Hollywood stars, international jet-setters, heads of state, and kama‘āina for decades. Live local entertainment melds with exotic handcrafted cocktails to provide the perfect atmosphere for winding down from a day at the beach or igniting an evening of island fun. Just steps away from the sands of Waikīkī Beach, Mai Tai Bar will leave you with an indelible imprint of Hawai‘i’s idyllic lifestyle.

VERANDA AT MOANA SURFRIDER

The ambiance at the Moana Surfrider’s Veranda is tranquil and relaxing, evoking memories of yesteryear beneath the Moana’s historic banyan tree. Indulge in a Waikīkī tradition of fine teas, elegant finger sandwiches, and sweet pastries.

KAI MARKET AT SHERATON WAIKIKI

Inspired by the plantation era that brought an influx of ethnic cuisine to the islands, Kai Market offers traditional Hawaiian delicacies using the freshest locally grown products. Nosh on Kai Market’s fare while enjoying the cool tradewinds near the resort’s new infinity edge pool and Waikīkī Beach.

For more information, call 808-921-4600 or visit dininginhawaii.com

UNIQUELY KAUA‘I

Aqua Hotels and Resorts is proud to introduce Kaua‘i’s newest boutique hotel, with stylish guest areas and rooms as well as upgraded services and amenities: Kaua‘i Shores. Offering a vibrant, resort-like experience, this contemporary boutique hotel’s combination of modern amenities and lively spaces speaks to today’s savvy traveler.

CONTEMPORARY ACCOMMODATIONS

Renovated rooms and a prime oceanfront location along Kaua‘i’s Royal Coconut

Coast make the all-new Kaua‘i Shores the ultimate island-life experience. Guest rooms now feature a sleek, retro-modern design with vibrant island colors of lime green, aqua, and orange. The use of lighter finishes on the furniture, including a fashionable platform bed with a curved headboard, creates a light, spacious feel. A selection of contemporary-styled, tropical floral patterns incorporated into the décor and artwork tie all the elements together.

NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED LOCATION

When you’re ready to embark on island adventures, explore historic Kapa‘a town and the popular nearby beaches and natural wonders that any outdoor enthusiast will enjoy, with this stylish hotel as the perfect home base. Located along the ocean in the heart of Kapa‘a, one of “America’s Prettiest Towns” according to Forbes Magazine, Kaua‘i Shores is minutes away from the widely acclaimed Ke Ala Hele Makalae Corridor (or “The Path That Goes By The Coast”), Wailua Golf Course, Wailua River, Wailua’s Coconut Marketplace, and the historic downtown of Kapa‘a.

Kaua‘i Shores is located at 420 Papaloa Rd. in Kapa‘a, Kaua‘i. For more information, visit kauaishoreshotel.com.

SLEEPING IN SAN FRANCISCO

UNWIND IN SAN FRANCISCO AT KIMPTON’S HOTEL TRITON AND HOTEL MONACO PROPERTIES.

When I have a few days to get away, I can say unequivocally that San Francisco is one of my favorite places to go. With eclectic offerings and creative energy pulsing from every corner, the city seems so much larger than its seven-by-seven miles.

Reflective of the city’s vibrancy are Kimpton’s two hotel properties, Hotel

Triton and Hotel Monaco, both centrally located in the heart of the city. From the moment you step in the door of Hotel Triton in Union Square, you know your stay here will be a colorful one. Awash in hues of bright yellow, pink, purple, and blue, Hotel Triton truly captures the independent spirit of the city (even the staff is without uniform, dressed coolly in whatever threads they were feeling on that particular day). Inspired by the Beat Generation of the 1950s, the guestrooms at Triton offer floor-to-ceiling inspiration from storied author Jack Kerouac, whose words are immortalized on the wallpaper with such phrases as, “all human beings are also dream beings,” and “dreaming ties all mankind together.”

If you’re looking to lounge in a little more luxury, Hotel Monaco, located just minutes away, is a great option. Inspired

by Art Nouveau sophistication, the hotel’s impressive lobby is composed of frescoed ceilings, bold columns, and a grand marble staircase. The guestrooms and suites are spacious and modern, beautifully designed with bold graphics and luxurious silk pillows in a kaleidoscope of color.

Make sure to hurry back for either hotel’s hosted wine hour from 5 to 6 p.m. On the chilly spring night we were there, the hotel also offered hot apple cider spiked with brandy, making for the coziest way to end a day in the city.

For more information, visit hoteltriton.com or monaco-sf.com.

O‘AHU

TASTE

KEY:

$ INEXPENSIVE

$$ MODERATE

$$$ MODERATELY EXPENSIVE

$$$$ EXPENSIVE

12TH AVENUE GRILL $$$ 1120 12th Ave. (808-732-9469) 12thavegrill.com

The fresh flavors of local produce paired with chef finds like skate and farmed organic New Zealand King Salmon make for bold and interesting tastes and textures at this contemporary American restaurant.

BRASSERIE DU VIN $$

1115 Bethel St. (808-545-1115) brasserieduvin.com

Channeling many of the cafés found in southern France, this quaint indoor-outdoor patio location serves up rustic dishes with an expansive wine list.

CAFÉ JULIA $$

1040 Richards St. (808-533-3334) cafejuliahawaii.com

Located at the Downtown YWCA, this historic café pays homage to those quiet mid-afternoon hours. Enjoy its simple elegance with friends or a good book.

COCINA $ 667 Auahi St. cocinahawaii.com

Enjoy street food-style eats like headcheese carnitas tacos and Mexican-style sandwiches—all made with local, sustainable ingredients—at this James Beard semi-finalist’s nose-to-tail taquería.

GRONDIN

$$

62 N. Hotel St. (808-566-6768) grondinhi.com

From a juicy, bone-in chuleta (pork chop) with saffron rice to shrimp ceviche with fried plantains, this unassuming French-Latin bistro will surprise you with its eclectic, perfectly prepared fare.

HASR

BISTRO $$

31 N. Pauahi St.  (808-533-4277)

hasrbistro.com

With an impressive lineup of live, local music and a tremendous wine selection via the accompanying wine shop next door, this Chinatown spot is great for lunch, pau hana, or dinner.

JJ DOLAN’S $$

1147 Bethel St. (808-537-4992)

jjdolans.com

This Irish pub stands out for its handcrafted New York pizza and hand-poured drinks. Follow it on Twitter for daily pizza specials.

KALAPAWAI CAFÉ

& DELI $$

750 Kailua Rd. (808-262-3354) kalapawaimarket.com

This spacious bistro-style stop features an impressive smallplate menu with a focus on clean, seasonal flavors and tidy presentation. The Okinawan sweet potato and goat cheese ravioli in thyme and almond brown butter sauce is a must-try.

KOKO HEAD CAFÉ $$

1145c 12th Ave. (808-732-8920) kokoheadcafe.com

Recently relocated celebrity chef Lee Anne Wong’s Kaimukī breakfast sensation focuses on the bounty of local foods Hawai‘i has

to offer, featured in piled-high hearty skillets and indulgent but balanced sweets.

LIVESTOCK TAVERN $$

49 N. Hotel St. (808-537-2577) livestocktavern.com

A seasonal American eatery focusing on simple and comforting dishes. Try the burrata with figs, the hearty smoked prime rib, or the Maine lobster roll.

LUCKY BELLY $$

50 N. Hotel St. (808-531-1888) luckybelly.com

Lucky Belly champions contemporary Asian dining and features a late-night window open Thursday through Saturday until 2 a.m. You won’t regret ordering the belly bowl, a rich ramen with pork belly, bacon, and sausage.

THE MANIFEST $

32 N. Hotel St. (808-523-7575) manifesthawaii.com

This downtown favorite is a modern coffee shop by day and whiskey bar by night, featuring popular deejays, rotating art exhibitions, and small bites.

MOKÉ’S BED & BREAKFAST $$

27 Hoolai St. (808-261-5565) mokeskailua.com

From lilikoi pancakes “that will change your life” (they will) to farm-fresh omelets and homemade bread, this family-owned-and-operated breakfast spot is a must when visiting Kailua.

MORNING GLASS $ 2955 E. Manoa Rd. (808-673-0065) morningglasscoffee.com

Featuring some of the island’s

best coffee, this cool café also offers playfully innovative eats from artisan sandwiches and baked goods to a full breakfast menu.

MW RESTAURANT $$$ 1538 Kapiolani Blvd. (808-955-6505) mwrestaurant.com

The collective experiences of the husband and wife duo who own this restaurant—who in the past have worked in the kitchens of Alan Wong’s, The French Laundry, and even Zippy’s—inform the contemporary Hawai‘i regional menu.

THE PIG AND THE LADY $$

83 N. King St. (808-585-8255) thepigandthelady.com

Inspired by his mother’s homecooked meals, chef Andrew Le presents contemporary French-Vietnamese fare that includes traditional dishes alongside those for the adventurous eater (like an entire pig’s head).

PINT + JIGGER $$

1936 S. King St.  (808-744-9593) pintandjigger.com

Escape for a moment at this modern public house, which intertwines craft beers and original cocktails with savory food in a classic social atmosphere.

SCRATCH KITCHEN & BAKE SHOP $$ 1030 Smith St. (808-536-1669) scratch-hawaii.com

At this all-day, Southern-inspired breakfast joint, enjoy comfort food made entirely from scratch.

TANGO CONTEMPORARY

CAFÉ $$

1288 Ala Moana Blvd., Ste. 120 (808-593-7288) tangocafehawaii.com

Enjoy Scandinavian and Asian-inspired cuisine in a contemporary, minimalist atmosphere that makes you feel like you’re picnicking in a park.

TOWN $$

3435 Waialae Ave. (808-735-5900) townkaimuki.com

One of the pioneers of Hawai‘i’s farm-to-table movement, Ed Kenney continues sourcing the best local ingredients and featuring them at his unpretentious American bistro.

VIA GELATO $ 1142 12th Ave. (917-674-5827) viagelatohawaii.com

This charming gelato shop incorporates seasonal produce and Hawai‘i heritage into its rotating variety of flavors, including lilikoi, coconut black sesame, and green tea haupia.

MAUI

CAPISCHE? $$$$ 555 Kaukahi Rd. (808-879-2224)

capische.com

This romantic garden-side restaurant serves a fusion of fare from southern France and northern Italy, with impeccable service by a wait staff that’s easy on the eyes.

HALI‘IMAILE

GENERAL STORE $$$

900 Hali’imaile Rd. (808-572-2666)

bevgannonrestaurants.com/ haliimaile

Dine at an old plantation-style home converted into a bright, casual restaurant featuring eclectic American food with Asian undertones.

KA‘ANA KITCHEN $

Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, 3550 Wailea Alanui Dr. (808-573-1234) maui.andaz.hyatt.com

Featuring old world flavor with new world innovation, this family style restaurant sources from local farmers, foragers, and locavores.

LA PROVENCE $$

3158 Lower Kula Rd. (808-878-1313) aprovencekula.com

Nestled in Kula, this French dining alcove attracts guests from all over the island with a substantial crepe menu

and a wide selection of pastries; close your eyes and you could be in Paris.

LEODA’S KITCHEN & PIE SHOP $$

820 Olowalu Village Rd. (808-662-3600) leodas.com

Boasting casual, family-style dining in a comfortable plantation-era atmosphere, Leoda’s features farm-fresh and sustainable ingredients in its handcrafted sandwiches, salads, baked goods, and of course, pie.

MATTEO’S OSTERIA $$$

161 Wailea Ike Pl. (808-891-8466)

matteosmaui.com

This traditional Italian eatery with a dash of modern flair serves fresh, regional specialties like house-made pastas and pizzas alongside Maui’s largest by-the-glass wine selection.

MAUI KOMBUCHA $

810 Kokomo Rd. (808-575-5233) mauikombucha.com

Perfect for the health-food enthusiast, this café serving raw food and freshly made kombucha is the cheaper, healthy alternative to a daytime drunken adventure in case you don’t have the money (or patience) to roam around the lecture-filled wineries on Maui.

MIGRANT MAUI $$

Wailea Beach Marriott, 3700 Wailea Alanui Dr. (808-875-9394) migrantmaui.com

Island flavors and grandma’s cooking inspire this Top Chef finalist’s Wailea restaurant, which includes contempo -

VIA GELATO

KA‘ANA KITCHEN

rary takes on Filipino classics alongside Asian-fusion fare.

PACIFIC’O $$$

505 Front St. (808-667-4341) pacificomaui.com

A dining experience setting the new standard for farm-to-table cuisine, this beachfront restaurant features a contemporary menu from the land and the sea.

RODEO GENERAL STORE $$

3661 Baldwin Ave. (808-572-1868)

They say you find wonder in the most unexpected of places, and the same could be said of this convenience store where you can pick up picnic food for a day at the beach or stop in to gawk at a selection of vegan bread alongside fine wine.

SAM SATO’S $

1750 Wili Pa Lp. (808-244-7124)

With simple and flavorful noodles dishes, this local favorite hole-in-the-wall is comfort food at its best, with offerings like dry mein, teriyaki beef sticks, and manju.

STAR NOODLE $$

286 Kupuohi St. (808-667-5400) starnoodle.com

Enjoy fresh, house-made noodles and other Asian specialties like the Filipino bacon and eggs or the Vietnamese crêpe at this renowned contemporary restaurant.

TASAKA GURI GURI $

70 E. Kaahumanu Ave. (808-871-4513)

Ice cream lovers will want to sample Tasaka’s famous creamy

TASTE GUIDES

sherbet traditionally served in two flavors: strawberry and pineapple. Around for years, their (low) price is just as novel as the dessert treat they soft-serve.

HAWAI‘I ISLAND

BUNS IN THE SUN $

75-5595 Palani Rd. (808-326-2774) bunsinthesunhawaii.com

This Kona bakery is known for having Kona’s best baked goods, including croissants, breads, cakes, and pastries, in addition to deli options for breakfast and lunch.

DA POKE SHACK $

76-6246 Ali‘i Dr. (808-329-7653) dapokeshack.com

This is pokē at its best, featuring cubes of fresh fish tossed with a variety of different ingredients, like Hawaiian salt, limu, avocado, furikake, and soy sauce.

ISLAND LAVA JAVA $$

75-5799 Alii Dr. (808-327-2161) islandlavajava.com

Voted “best breakfast in Kona,” this bistro is the favorite coffee house of residents, using only grass-fed Big Island beef, organic goat cheeses, and other locally grown organic produce. Get there early to snag the yummy pull-apart bread.

KANAKA KAVA $

75-5803 Alii Dr. (866-327-1660) kanakakava.com

Enjoy a bowl of certified-organic kava grown locally on the Big Island alongside small pupus in an outdoor bar-like setting.

MERRIMAN’S $$$

65-1227 Opelo Rd. (808-885-6822); additional locations online merrimanshawaii.com

A fine-dining experience treating you to the freshest local ingredients paired with the finest of wines. Try the Kahua Ranch lamb, Waipi‘o taro and Lone Palm chickpea falafel, or the Hawaiian hogs butcher’s cut.

ON THE ROCKS $$

75-5824 Kahakai Rd. (808-329-1493) huggosontherocks.com

A casual, toes-in-the-sand restaurant and bar, this oceanview hangout showcases some of the most talented musicians from around the island alongside eats like kālua pig nachos, Kona fish tacos, and the Mauna Kea burger.

THREE FAT PIGS & THE THIRSTY WOLF

$$

69-250 Waikoloa Beach Dr. (808-339-7145) thethreefatpigs.com

Pairing a restaurant and an upstairs gastropub, this innovative combo offers a lake view with original cocktails and an adventurous style that blends classical European culinary techniques with fresh Pacific Rim ingredients for beautifully created, expertly prepared, and artfully presented dishes.

KAUA‘I

BAR ACUDA $$$ 5-5161 Kuhio Hwy. (808-826-7081) restaurantbaracuda.com

With cuisine inspired by the

Mediterranean regions of Europe, including southern France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal, this tapas bar is one of Kaua‘i’s coolest places to relax with friends and sip some wine.

DELI & BREAD CONNECTION

3-2600 Kaumualii Hwy. (808-245-7115)

$

Located next to Macy’s in Kukui Grove, this nondescript deli is the place to go for sandwiches made with homemade breads baked fresh daily.

GAYLORD’S AT KILOHANA

$$$

3-2087 Kaumualii Hwy. (808-245-9593) gaylordskauai.com

Using foods found in its backyard garden and from farmers around the island, this farm-totable restaurant pays careful attention to the seasons, tweaking menus each week.

HAMURA’S SAIMIN $ 2956 Kress St. (808-245-3271)

Soft, slightly chewy saimin noodles make this no-frills mom-

HAMURA’S SAIMIN

FLUX HAWAII FOR

Preppy style meets vintage aloha. Reyn Spooner digs deep into their fabric archives with “Hula Palms” a rayon neat of hula girls and palm trees, and styles them exclusively for FLUX in their vintage men’s panel shirt & ladies summer frock. A little whimsy combined with a lot of fun!

and-pop joint a favorite among locals. Don’t leave without trying the barbecue teriyaki sticks and lilikoi pie.

JOSSELIN’S TAPAS BAR AND GRILL $$$

The Shops at Kukui‘ula, 2829 Ala Kalanikaumaka St. (808-742-7117) josselins.com

This tapas bar features dishes inspired by all parts of the world but uses as many locally grown ingredients as possible.

KALAHEO CAFÉ AND COFFEE CO. $$

2-2560 Kaumuali‘i Hwy. (808-332-5858) kalaheo.com

Nestled in the paniolo town of Kalāheo, where 4,000 acres of coffee fields flow, Kalaheo Café offers lots of breakfast choices and coffee drinks in a breezy, country-market environment.

KOLOA FISH MARKET $

5482 Koloa Rd. (808-742-6199)

The spot for pokē, local style cubes of fresh fish with various seasoning and sauces and other local plate lunch favorites. Cash only.

LIVING FOODS MARKET & CAFE $$

The Shops at Kukui‘ula, 2829 Ala Kalanikauamaka (808-742-2323) livingfoodskauai.com

Shop at the island’s largest selection of organic, sustainable, and locally grown produce and don’t forget to grab lunch in the market’s café-style restaurant, which serves a simple European menu.

THE FERAL PIG $$

3501 Rice St. (808-246-1100) theferalpigkauai.com

A meat lover’s dream, this pub and diner features breakfast, lunch, and dinner items that read like a shopping list you would bring to a butcher shop.

O‘AHU

FISHCAKE $$$

307c Kamani St. (808-593-1231) fishcake.us

A home furnishings and gallery experience showcasing furniture, accessories, and art for the contemporary home.

IN4MATION $$

Chinatown, 1154 Nuuanu Ave. (808-538-8898); McCully, 2009 S. King St. (808-941-3831); Pearlridge, 98-1005 Moanalua Rd. (808-488-0411) in4mants.com

In4mation’s strength in this niche market is built upon a set of varied experiences, embodying Hawai‘i’s action sports, lifestyle, and retail market. In4mation carries alternative design concepts, eclectic lines, and products for both men and women.

LEATHER SOUL $$$$

Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center, 3rd flr. (808-922-0777); 119 Merchant St. (808-523-7700) leathersoulhawaii.com

This premium retailer of fine leather shoes and accessories keeps gents dashing with

handcrafted footwear from such esteemed brands as Alden, Saint Crispin’s, J.M. Weston, and John Lobb.

MANUHEALI‘I $$

930 Punahou St. (808-942-9868); Kailua, 5 Hoolai St. (808-261-9865) manuhealii.com

With new prints every six to eight weeks, this shop is the best place to find unique alohawear that is both comfortable and flattering for everyone.

MARTIN & MACARTHUR

$$$

Ward Center Flagship, 1200 Ala Moana Blvd. (808-941-0074); additional locations online martinandmacarthur.com

This retailer of fine koa gifts and accessories carries the widest selection of classic Hawaiian gifts, including koa jewelry boxes, feather lei, and koa bowls, all made by the finest craftsmen in Hawai‘i.

MŌNO $$ 2013 S. King St. (808-955-1595) monohawaii.com

Inspired by the careful curation of boutiques in Japan, this lifestyle shop specializes in small design goods for the home and office.

MUUMUU HEAVEN $$ 767 Kailua Rd. (808-263-3366) muumuuheaven.com

Each piece is one of a kind at this eco-conscious boutique, with Hawaiian-style prints and fabrics recycled and repurposed to create fresh apparel that is good to the environment.

OLIVER MEN’S SHOP $$ 49 Kihapai St. (808-261-6587) oliverhawaii.com

A surf-inspired lifestyle boutique, this men’s store features some of the most hard-to-find contemporary brands like Aloha Sunday, Saturdays, Mucho Aloha, and M.Nii.

OWENS & CO. $$ 1152 Nuuanu Ave. (808-531-4300) owensandcompany.com

Located on a corner in the historic Chinatown Arts district, this bright boutique offers a fantastic collection of home accessories, gifts, and vintage items.

REYN SPOONER $$ Ala Moana Center, Kahala Mall, and Sheraton Waikiki Hotel; additional locations online reynspooner.com

This manufacturer of modern aloha attire has been featuring original patterns and its iconic reverse-print since 1956.

ROBERTA OAKS $$ 19 N. Pauahi St. (808-428-1214) robertaoaks.com

With a collection of mod-vibed dresses and sharp aloha shirts, Roberta Oaks is dedicated to supporting ethical practices and a sustainable economy. Expect eco-fabrics like bamboo jersey and organic cotton mixed with bold colors and funky prints.

LEATHER SOUL

MOVIE THEATERS LOVED AND LOST

TEXT BY BEAU FLEMISTER | IMAGE BY JONAS YUN

Memories of a few of my most formative milestones begin with a theme song: Boom…PAP…Boom, PAP-PAP! Onscreen, an outrigger canoe cuts through the waters at twilight. With torches ablaze, men in malo and women adorned with maile dance a dramatic hula, conch shell horns blowing and a primordial drum beat pounding all the while.

There was a time in Kailua when there were five different movie theaters. One in ‘Aikahi, one in Kailua Town, one in Enchanted Lakes, and one in Keolu, plus an old drive-in off Dump Road. For a town of 30,000, that’s certainly unsustainable—but also amazing. When I was 8 years old, I rode my bike over to the Kailua Cinemas (the one by Holiday Mart, turned Daiei, turned Don Quijote, soon to be Target) with a friend, and we watched Edward Scissorhands. About halfway through the film, something unsettling bubbled deep in my gut and clutched at my throat. It was empathy, and it was the first time I felt like crying because of the way a film made me feel.

A couple years later, my dad took me to see The Endless Summer 2—30 years after his father took him to see the first one—at the Aikahi Twin Theatres by the Marine Corps base in Kāne‘ohe. In a theater full of buzzing, hollering surfers hooting at exotic dream-waves like Cloudbreak and Witch’s

Rock, I experienced a profound milestone that sparked a subsequent lifetime of traveling. And I had a special father-son moment, too, of course.

There was a theater right on Kalakaua Avenue, the Waikiki 2 or something, where I saw Dances With Wolves and the sex scene made me feel awkward and confused. What were they doing? Not long after that, I saw Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and I laughed so hard my stomach hurt. By age 12, my parents had shown me the tricks of the trade: how to properly sneak Red Vines in beneath your belt or Reese’s Pieces in your pockets, how to hide and cradle soft drinks in a sweatshirt just right so they wouldn’t spill as the doorman tore your ticket. There is something equally as sacred in teaching a child to disobey the rules as there is in teaching him to follow them. There was a certain growth in learning how to beat the system.

By freshman year of college, although Ward 16 and its stadium seating was snuffing out the old boys, Restaurant Row 9 had become a full-blown independent art house. I saw City of God there and swore that I’d fight for social justice. Restaurant Row was a place that could breed a raw, unadulterated idealism. You saw a movie there and suddenly wanted to change the world or write your masterpiece.

And then there was the Varsity Twin Cinema. Ohhh, the Varsity! As filthy as its squeaky, gum-ridden seats were, the treasures it screened were wondrous. Documentaries, foreign films, indie flicks, brilliant shorts, quantum physics—the Varsity felt like Paris in the ’30s. But the Varsity finally closed in 2007 and gave its stash to the Kahala 8. Many more went the way of the short-lived “dollar theater.”

What’s the point? The point is that all these theaters are dead, and more are dying. Listen, I know it’s hard; heck, I’m going less, myself. Netflix, right? But these theaters that we’ve loved and lost once raised us. In them, we were captivated; we cried; we laughed till we pissed ourselves. We kissed our first crushes, and even walked out now and then (sorry, Tyler Perry). There is something to be said about a temple like that, a place as personal as your bedroom, where you can share an experience with 100 people, or just two. A place where we choose to leave a bright Hawai‘i day to sit in darkness. A place where our hearts race briefly in anticipation at the sound of that opening song. Where an ancient drum beats and men and women dance hula by firelight, ushering in our perfect and unwavering attention.