The Pacific Island Film Festival, which recently wrapped up in New York City, provided a space to showcase films, including several filmed in or about Hawaiʻi. The festival, which ran from Sept. 17-20, featured 28 films, representing 10 island nations from across the Pacific.
One of those films was the documentary “Lahaina: Voices of Change,” directed by Ty Sanga, and produced by Angie Laprete, who was also the producer of “The Wrecking Crew,” “Chief of War,” “Monarch: Legacy of Monsters,” and more. “Lahaina: Voices of Change” explores how one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history displaced thousands of people and claimed lives.
“It was actually really important to be able to screen our documentary ‘Lahaina: Voices of Change’ in New York City for Pacific Island Film Festival because that's the reason why we made this documentary,” Sanga told Aloha State Daily. “It's three years later, and we're still dealing with the ramifications of the fire, and a lot of families are still struggling to get by. Hawaiʻi is a small island in the Pacific and to be able to get our stories out there — to put a face to these stories in New York City — that’s our goal is to get more advocates to come along and help us on this journey because when we're talking about global warming ... it needs to be everyone involved, not just us here in Hawaiʻi”.
One of the firefighters who responded to the Maui wildfires was at the screening, he said.
“He shared his first-person experience with the audience, and I think that just made it real,” Sanga said. “They’ve seen the footage on social media or in the news. And now that's three years ago. We're in a super El Niño right now and climate change is real and it's happening. Lahaina was one of the first voices, or places, to experience that so we had a really captivated audience that made it special. Hopefully, we just need more advocates that are fighting for our ʻāina, our land, not just Hawaiʻi [but] everywhere they’re at, in their own communities, because that's how we truly make a difference.”
The festival gives films a chance to reach families living in the diaspora and find new audiences, he said.
Also featured in the festival was the short 16-minute film “What We Carry,” which stars Lindsay Watson, who is also its director and writer. Laprete is the producer. The short, which Watson hopes to eventually develop into a full-length feature, explores the experience of a woman who had multiple miscarriages and is ready to abandon her dream of motherhood when she discovers a secret.
“I wanted to be able to tell a universal story with Polynesian faces,” Watson told ASD. “I wanted the world to be able to see us as more than just their vacation, [or] as paradise [or] people who work in hotels and work at the airport. And even in the casting world too, as more than the hula dancer, the bartender, the dancer. To see a muscular, tatted up Polynesian man, who's a flawed husband, and a Hawaiian wife, who is going through something that many women in this world have gone through.”
The short includes a mostly Polynesian cast and had a budget of $25,000, which was covered by a grant from the Julia S. Gouw Short Film Challenge. Watson, who currently lives in Los Angeles, was born and raised on Maui.
After the screening of “What We Carry” at PIFF, which was the film's New York debut, a woman who normally doesn’t like movies told Watson she cried through it and loved the film.
“She, again, also had no connection to the culture of Hawaiʻi and this story still resonated with her,” the director said. “That to me is the power of film is connecting cultures and connecting places that have no other way of being connected.”
“What We Carry” was filmed almost entirely in Kāneʻohe, mostly in the house of Watson’s grandmother, who passed away about a month before filming started.
The festival was a chance to take a story filmed in Hawaiʻi to new audiences, Watson said.
“The number one thing is being able to take our film across the Pacific — across the country,” she said. “That's something most people don't even have the opportunity to do.”
Recently, more Pacific Islanders are sharing their own stories.
“And I think it's all because of access,” Watson said. “For so long, there wasn't access and education and connections for a lot of Pacific Islanders to tell their own stories. There were only a few of us in this industry, and there's power in numbers.”
The existence of the Hawaiʻi International Film Festival, as well as programs such as the International Cultural Arts Network, the Pasifika Entertainment Advancement Komiti and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment — which were designed to increase Pacific Islander representation in Hollywood — brought the AAPI community together and helped them get a seat at the table, she said.
PIFF partnered with AMC+ Streaming so five films from the festival can stream to even larger audiences. Three of those films have ties to Hawaiʻi, including “Hawaiian Soul” directed by ʻĀina Paikai; “Aikāne, directed by Daniel Sousa, Dean Hamer, and Joe Wilson; and “The Arrangements” directed by Sonny Ganaden.
Find the full list of featured films on PIFF’s website, including “Dasher,” from Director Alexander Bocchieri and Writer Bryson Chun, who worked on the television series “Doogie Kamealoha, M.D.,” as well as “Remathau: People of the Ocean,” a documentary that features Nainoa Thompson, among other titles.
Katie Helland can be reached at katie@alohastatedaily.com.
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