The MACC will be collecting donations for the Maui Food Bank during this event. We ask that our patrons bring needed items for those impacted by the wildfires. Donation bins will be located near the MACC's main entry gates.
Established in 1981, the
Hawai‘i International Film Festival is a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement of cultural exchange and media in the Pacific Rim. HIFF is a premier international film event that has won the praise of international filmmakers, scholars, educators, governments, programmers and film industry leaders across the globe. HIFF’s programming has two particular mandates: to be a festival of record for emerging films from Asia, the Pacific, and North America and to present the top festival films from around the world, annually screening films from over 45 countries.
HIFF’s Industry and Education programs present free content and panels in the fields of film, music, virtual reality, and new media entertainment. These transmedia programs reflect HIFF’s commitment to exhibiting innovative creative content coming from the Asia Pacific Rim and commitment to establish a pipeline of creative industry talent in Hawai‘i. HIFF is an Academy Award®-qualifying Festival in both its Best International Short Film and Best Made-In-Hawaii Short Film award categories.
For more information, visit
www.HIFF.org
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19:
1:00 PM | KANIELA: THE DANIEL KALEIKINI STORY | 68 Minutes | English | 2024
Director: Michael Lum, Pawel Nuckowski
UNITED STATES PREMIERE
Made In Hawai‘i
A loving tribute to the late ‘Ambassador of Aloha’ including interviews with the man himself completed before his passing last year. Born into a large family in Papakōlea, Kaniela began working in Hawai‘i’s tourism industry in the 1950s and grew to be a beloved and internationally known entertainer with over 30 years of performing, not only here, but Las Vegas and Japan as well. One of the last projects he worked on was recording with his grandson Nicholas.
CLICK HERE for the trailer
3:00pm | MADE IN HAWAI‘I SHORTS PROGRAM: HEALING LAHAINA, IT’S SHAVE ICE, KAI HALI‘A (SEA OF MEMORY), and RECLAIM | 89 Minutes | English & Hawaiian (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi)
HEALING LAHAINA | 35 minutes | English | 2024
Director: Laurel Tamayo
Director Laurel Tamayo’s family lost their multigenerational home in the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, the deadliest wildfire in modern US history. Through personal recounts, this documentary paints an intimate portrait of survival, climate change and colonization, and community resilience.
IT’S SHAVE ICE | 19 minutes | English | 2023
Director: Jaye Orikasa
Discover the colorful journey and stories that have made shave ice the popular treat it is today. From the behind-the-scenes action of local shave ice shops to the cultural historyand significance of Hawaiʻi’s coolest snack, IT’S SHAVE ICE will introduce you to a world beyond the syrup and snowy ice so many have come to love.
KAI HALI‘A (SEA OF MEMORY) | 9 minutes | English & Hawaiian (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi) | 2024
Directors: Angelique Kalani Axelrode
In the abstract realm of memory, a diasporic kanaka struggles to connect with their family and lover. By engaging with their moʻokūʻauhau (genealogy) and calling on their kūpuna (ancestors) and ke kai (ocean), they are able to cope with buried trauma and come back to themselves. Seeing memory as an intricate ʻupena (net) of both intangible and tangible threads of reality, intertwined with visceral feelings that intimately connect us with our kūpuna (ancestors) and the ʻāina (land), and the art of remembering brings us back to our core.
RECLAIM | 26 minutes | English & Hawaiian (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi) | 2024
Directors: Geeta Gandbhir, Justyn Ah Chong
Honor follows in the footsteps of his older brother Hanalei in learning the Hawaiian tradition of hula. The young brothers are proud of their role in reclaiming Hawaiian heritage, not just through dance but also the meaningful power of language and custom. Hanalei is selected to dance at Merrie Monarch, a prestigious competition considered the “Olympics of Hula.” Along with the rest of their family, Honor cheers Hanalei on as he takes the stage and plays his part in sustaining the practice of hula — one that has stayed resilient in the face of cultural erasure and colonization.
5:30pm | ONE MILLION DOLLA | 99 Minutes | English | 2024
Director: Stefan C. Schaefer
WORLD PREMIERE
Made In Hawai‘i
In this Maui-set mockumentary, Big Island content creator Alex Farnham plays the Guy, a houseless buffoon with a heart of gold. He chases chickens and sells coconuts in his happy-go-lucky existence. However, everything changes when he’s unexpectedly gifted one million dollars and a documentary crew decides to follow him. Before Guy knows it, people come out of the woodwork, latching on to become his posse and he soon finds out who his real friends are.
8:00pm | TERRESTRIAL | 76 Minutes | English | 2024
Director: Alex Farnham
The struggle of a teacher being forced to work in an environment where he feels as if he doesn't belong and to work with a severed partner from his past. Maybe a friendly creature is the only one he can count on. Buckle up because this sci-fi rocket is about to take off! Written, directed and starring Big Island filmmaker and Internet personality Alex Farnham and co-starring THE WIND AND THE RECKONING’s Lindsay Watson and local comedian Easton James, TERRESTRIAL is an 808, homegrown, ode to horror like THE FACULTY, mashed together with sci-fi comedies like EVOLUTION.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20:
1:00pm | SHAKA, A STORY OF ALOHA | 80 Minutes | English | 2024
Director: Alexander Bocchieri
HAWAI‘I PREMIERE
Made In Hawai‘i
The Lāʻie community figures large in this documentary that tries to find the origins of the state’s “Swiss army knife” of good-natured gestures. The latter part of the documentary spends a good deal of its time relating the fascinating story of community leader Tutu Hamana Kalili back in the 1910s that may have started it all.
CLICK HERE for the trailer
3:30pm | STANDING ABOVE THE CLOUDS | 82 Minutes | English | 2024
Director: Jalena Keane-Lee
STANDING ABOVE THE CLOUDS follows the largest political movement in modern Hawaiian history, and the indigenous women leaders who have successfully sustained it since 2010. At the center of the global movement are Pua Case and her two daughters Hāwane Rios and Kapulei Flores. They are joined by Mehana Kihoi and Leinaʻala Sleightholm who have changed their families’ lives by joining the movement. All three families have put their bodies on the line, faced arrest standing off with police, and testified as key petitioners suing the State of Hawaiʻi to prevent the building of the world's largest telescope on their sacred mountain. Through the lens of mothers and daughters, our film explores intergenerational healing and the social and emotional labor of retaining ancient ceremonies in a rapidly modernizing world. With the fate of the telescope still to be decided, the film shows that victory is in the perseverance of a movement and the intergenerational healing found in this sisterhood.
CLICK HERE for the trailer
Playing with
THE QUEEN’S FLOWERS | 12 Minutes | English | 2024
Director: Ciara Lacy
A magical take on a true story, THE QUEEN’S FLOWERS is an animated short adventure for kids that follows Emma, a native Hawaiian girl in 1915 Honolulu, as she makes a special gift for the last monarch of Hawaiʻi, Queen Liliʻuokalani.
6:00pm | MOLOKAʻI BOUND | 112 Minutes | English & Hawaiian (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi) | 2024
Director: Alika Tengan
After years of incarceration, Kainoa De Silva, a wayward Hawaiian man, is released on parole and committed to reconnecting with his family. Most important to Kainoa is rebuilding a relationship with his adolescent son, Jonathan. But acclimating to a normal life in Hawai‘i is harder than it seems. While working to get back on his own feet, Kainoa must contend with pressures from old friends and relatives. In response he tends to do all the wrong things for the right reasons. In trying to prove himself worthy of his family and his native heritage, Kainoa’s journey is a story of both reconciliation and redemption.
Food and beverages will be available for purchase in the McCoy Studio Courtyard.
