Featured articles, opinion pieces and reviews by select HIFF staff, interns and content providers.
HIFF TALKS: The Official Podcast of the Hawai‘i International Film Festival is recorded by and for the HIFF community, we go a little beyond the normal Q&A with filmmakers on their works and interests. Starting with intention, our talks inevitably go into unexpected, spontaneous directions. Such is the life of building community with creatives with […]
HIFF TALKS: The Official Podcast of the Hawai‘i International Film Festival is recorded by and for the HIFF community, we go a little beyond the normal Q&A with filmmakers on their works and interests. Starting with intention, our talks inevitably go into unexpected, spontaneous directions. Such is the life of building community with creatives with
HIFF Talks @ Sundance: Sonya Childress & Sahar Driver, co-directors of COLOR CONGRESS Read More »
Alika Tengan’s Every Day in Kaimukī (2022) is the first narrative feature by a Kānaka Maoli filmmaker to premiere at Sundance, but it arrives as part of a cohort of similarly unconventional features from Hawaiʻi, including Christopher Makoto Yogi’s August at Akiko’s (2018) and I Was a Simple Man (2021), and Christopher Kahunahana’s Waikiki (2020).
Sundance 2022 Review: EVERY DAY IN KAIMUKĪ Read More »
For the past two years, I lived on Zoom. I watched films on streaming platforms. The death knell of cinemas was and still is looming. My livelihood and the fate of the Hawai‘i International Film Festival was in jeopardy with a lot of unknowns on the fate of cinema. Then, movie theaters eventually reopened, albeit
HIFF Artistic Director’s Top 10 Films of 2021 Read More »
The votes have been tabulated and the audience has spoken. Here are the HIFF41 Audience Award winners presented by Hawaii News Now. The HIFF41 Audience Award winners were officially announced on Hawaii News Now. You can view the broadcast announcement here. HIFF41 Jury Award winners were announced during the HIFF Awards Gala
HIFF41 Audience Awards Announcement Read More »
Project Will Incubate and Support Eight Native Hawaiian Filmmakers In the Production of One Collaborative Feature Film (November 15, 2021) Honolulu, HI — The Hawai’i International Film Festival (HIFF) presented by Halekulani announced today the launch of MAKAWALU, HIFF’s first production project that will bring eight kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) directors together to make one
HIFF Launches First Film Production MAKAWALU Read More »
Timothée Chalamet (pictured) as Paul Atreides Not even the dunes of Arrakis could smother the massive-scale retelling of Frank Herbert’s 1965 DUNE and psychedelic-inducing spice pales in comparison to the vision Denis Villeneuve achieves. But with that, we still have to ask: Is Dune a “white-savior” story? Note from the author: In an attempt
Notes on DUNE from a Native Hawaiian / by Kanani Lyons Read More »
Hawai‘i International Film Festival Announces Festival Award Winners Best Made in Hawai’i Feature – I WAS A SIMPLE MAN, directed by Christopher Makoto Yogi Best Made in Hawai’i Short – RIVER OF SMALL GODS, Directed by Bradley Tangonan Kau Ka Hōkū Grand Jury Award Winner – DARK RED FOREST, Directed by Jin Huaqing HIFF Best
HIFF41 Announces Festival Award Winners Read More »
In a theatre, an entire world exists. There’s aliens, robots, superheroes, and faces from another era and place that are only brought to life by the ethereal-like light that shines from one edge of the room, projecting onto the other end. There’s a silver screen, 30 feet tall and 40 feet wide, that reflects the
JANE CAMPION: A Retrospective / by Kanani Lyons Read More »
The world’s first comedy horror film is thought to be ONE EXCITING NIGHT (1922), which was written, directed, and produced by D.W. Griffith. As the last century added a profound amount of films to this genre, it is valuable to observe why the comedy horror genre has survived in cinemas for this long. Despite being
COMEDY HORROR MOVIES: The Embodiments of “Camp” Are Here to Stay Read More »
With aloha, HIFF acknowledges its occupation of ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Indigenous Hawaiian people, the Kānaka Maoli.
With gratitude, we honor the ʻāina itself and the generations who steward it.
