THOUGHTS / BAD AXE: A Companion essay by scholar Kim Compoc // Director David Siev’s riveting documentary BAD AXE takes its name from his predominantly white hometown in rural Michigan. Siev began the project in March 2020 to chronicle his family’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely the lockdowns and difficulties in keeping the […]
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The 94th annual Academy Award nominations were announced earlier this week with very strong representation from several HIFF41 official selections. Taking the lead with a whopping 12 Oscar nominations is Jane Campion’s THE POWER OF THE DOG, including Best Picture, Best Director, and sweeping all the acting nominations for its main cast. Read our recent
THOUGHTS / NIGHT RAIDERS: A Companion essay by scholar Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada // There is a beautiful dream at the heart of the ramshackle brutal future Danis Goulet (Cree and Métis) conjures in NIGHT RAIDERS—that we don’t have to live like that. Our future can be one of pilina and possibility. In the film,
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THOUGHTS / KARMALINK: A Companion essay by scholar Ida Yoshinaga // Who remembers spiritual cinema, the early-2000s trend, which promoted feature films with messages of uplift and inspiration? Few of these spiritual-cinema entries addressed macro-societal aspects of living in the 21st century, such as globalization and unequal impacts of the digital era. These overlooked issues
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THOUGHTS / THE ISLAND IN ME: A Companion essay by scholar Caryn Lesuma // Filmmaker Gemma Cubero del Barrio’s The Island in Me follows Florence “Johnny” Frisbie and Amelia Borofsky as they make a homecoming journey to Pukapuka, a Cook Islands atoll, where both women spent their formative years. The film frames Frisbie and
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THOUGHTS / HIGH TIDE, DON’T HIDE: A Companion essay by scholar Jaimey Hamilton Faris // The youth are our future ancestors. The Youth Climate Strike generation, who organized the largest-yet direct action for the climate in 2019, are especially important elders-in-the-making as they mobilize for their future families and generations to come. Emboldened and
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THOUGHTS / CROSSINGS: A Companion essay by scholar Vernadette Gonzalez // In 2015, an assembly of women who wanted to take a walk, raised a stir on the Korean peninsula. Their intention was simple, gather, talk, and sew—to create community through the simplest of acts, and to make imaginable a vision of peace on
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We are honored to provide a special for-your-consideration (aka FYC) screening of KAPAEMAHU, which won the HIFF40 Made in Hawai‘i Award for Best Animated Film, and is currently short listed for Academy Award consideration in the Best Animated Short category. In the long and storied history of the Academy Awards, Hollywood and the entertainment industry
FYC: Watch award-winning KAPAEMAHU on HIFF Streaming Service through February 20 Read More »
WAGON, a documentary feature directed by Maui-born and raised Aniston Eyre, received the HIFF40 Documentary Audience Award. This is significant because Eyre is the first student filmmaker to win the award in the Festival’s 40 years. Now 19, Eyre is currently attending Columbia University (remotely from Maui because of the pandemic). We recently sat down
HIFF HANA HOU Spotlight: Q&A with Aniston Eyre, Director of Audience Winner WAGON Read More »
Within the creative confines of a classroom setting, one is expected to perform to a certain standard, while also contributing to the peer learning experience. This becomes especially challenging when the assignment requires students to empathize with texts and search introspectively in order to form a response with substance and actual stakes. In WIRUN, lead
HIFF HANA HOU Spotlight: Best Actress Ebony McGuire for WIRUN 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.