STATE OF ALOHA DATE: MONDAY, MAY 3 TIME: 7:00 PM VENUE: NCPD BUY TICKETS

STATE OF ALOHA
(United States, 2009) Dir./Wtr.: Anne Misawa
Video, 75 min., color, documentary, in English and Hawaiian w/ E.S.

Produced in collaboration with students from UH-Manoa’s Academy for Creative Media, this latest effort by director/cinematographer Anne Misawa (WAKING MELE, Festival 1999) offers an exhaustive examination of Hawaii’s current struggles to define its culture and sense of identity in the fifty years since statehood in 1959. Beginning with footage from recent demonstrations leading up to the 50th anniversary, a cacophony of voices, from politicians, activists, students, locals and even the occasional tourist, recount their experiences of when Hawaii became a state, from celebratory to downbeat. Largely lost in this din, however, is a comprehensive look at how Hawaii got to where it is today — its place as a pawn in U.S. imperialism, its colonization, the overthrow of its sovereign government in 1898, its development as a tourist haven, and the decimation of its native peoples from a population estimated to be over 800,000 before Captain James Cook landed in the 1800s to little more than 40,000 by 1880.

To understand Hawaii’s current situation, Misawa recounts that history through archival images, newsreel footage, and moving testimonials by voices including the likes of activists Haunani-Kay Trask, Kekuni Blaisdell, Jon Osorio; historians Tom Coffman; politicians Daniel Inouye, John Waihee, Daniel Akaka; and numerous man-on-the-street interviews. What emerges is a troubling history dictated by U.S. imperialism and business interests ranging from the development of the sugar cane industry, racist xenophobia, Pearl Harbor and the resulting internment of Japanese Americans, and the emergence of a political voice as exemplified by the likes of Inouye, Akaka, “Spark” Matsunaga, George Ariyoshi, Neil Abercrombie, and others. The larger effect of the statehood tale is the collective loss of indigenous identity and culture, as seen in student-shot footage of face-to-face demonstrations and excerpts from news programs documenting both sides of the current struggles.

Weaving in and out of this story is a second, more nuanced narrative that documents the growing politicization of native Hawaiians, from the unionization of workers in various service and manufacturing industries in the 1940s punctuated by a watershed 1949 labor strike that shut down Honolulu’s shipping ports, to the resulting rise of Communist hysteria. The attendant rise of the Democratic Party and its role in shaping Hawaii’s current political and cultural direction adds a further layer of complication to this story — a tale in which the next chapter is waiting to be written, this time by the people whose very lives have been impacted by both outsiders and oppressors.
— Abraham Ferrer

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COMMUNITY CO-PRESENTER: IDA