Ahead of the Majority
Hawai'i congresswoman Patsy Mink
Hawai’i filmmaker Kimberlee Bassford’s biographical documentary of pioneer Hawai’i congresswoman Patsy Mink premiers at Hawai’i International Film Festival.
Mink was the first woman of color to serve in the US House of Representatives and co-authored Title IX, the landmark legislation that opened up higher education and athletics to American women.
Dubbed “Patsy Pink” for her unabashed liberal democratic views during the Vietnam War, she served in Congress for 24 years championing the rights of women, workers, immigrants and the poor.
Ahead of the Majority: The Life and Times of Patsy Mink traces the little-known story of the trailblazing dynamo who changed American politics forever.
World Premiere – Sun 12 Oct 7:00pm
Encore Screening – Sat 18 Oct 3:00pm
Regal Theatres Dole Cannery 18
Other Pacific films at HIFF:
Vincent Ward’s Rain of the Children
Marshall Islands’ first feature Morning Comes So Soon
Anne Keala Kelly’s Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i
Sima Urale’s short Coffee and Allah
Rick Bacigalupi’s doc on Jason Scott Lee’s sustainable Big Island farm Living Pono
Savage Swings
Samoan/Kiwi rapper Savage goes gold in America and takes honors in Aotearoa.
Savage’s hit single Swing passed the half-million mark in digital/mobile sales in the US this week, landing at #40 on the Billboard 100 and #7 on the iTunes hip hop chart, with more than 3 million views on his MySpace site.
Savage, aka Demetrius Savelio, shared the Tui award for International Achievement at the New Zealand Music Awards with another kiwi top-selling act, folk-jokesters Flight of the Conchords.
Swing topped the NZ charts in 2005 and went global last year after being featured in the blockbuster comedy Knocked Up, leading to a deal with Universal Republic records. Savage is repped by Dawn Raid Entertainment, the South Auckland hip hop powerhouse.
Swing is the first single from his new album Savage Island, due out in December, featuring guest artists and producers Akon, Soulja Boy, Rock City, Sean Paul and Boo Yaa Tribe.
The video is directed by Flyy Kai Crawford, who also directed Savage’s first hit Moonshine.
Kiwi star export drops in and wins
NZ Herald
Savage hits gold in US with “Swing” remix
Spasifik online
Shigeyuki Kihara at the Met
Taualuga: The Last Dance by Shigeyuki Kihara
Samoan-Japanese multimedia performance artist Shigeyuki Kihara brings her ground-breaking, gender-bending work to New York in the first solo exhibit by a Pacific artist at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Kihara’s striking multidisciplinary work draws on diverse sources such as 18th Century ethnographic photographs, Samoan legends and pop culture images to riff on themes of gender, identity, indigenous Pacific spirituality, consumerism and cross-cultural encounters.
The exhibit includes work from her photographic series Black Sunday, Fa’a Fafine: In a Manner of a Woman, Fale Aitu: House of Spirits and Vavau: Tales from Ancient Samoa, in which Kihara investigates notions of representation by interpreting her own image in a variety of guises.
Kihara will perform her solo performance Taualuga: The Last Dance and speak about her work during October.
Shigeyuki Kihara: Living Photographs
October 7, 2008–February 1, 2009
Lila Acheson Wallace Wing, 1st floor
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Artist bio at Pasifika Styles
Pacific Films at All Roads 08
Five Pacific films are featured in National Geographic’s All Roads Film Festival screening in Los Angeles and Washington DC during September and October 08:
Hawaikii – first dramatic short from Tainui/Te Arawa filmmaker Mike Jonathan about a young Maori girl’s first day at school
Guarding the Family Silver – Aotearoa’s Moana Maniapoto and Toby Mills (Moana & the Tribe) grapple with intellectual property issues in the global marketplace
Keao –short film about a young hula dancer’s struggle with commercialization of the dance, from first-time Hawaiian filmmaker Kaliko Spenser
Young, Gifted and Samoan – short doc featuring three Samoan youth creating music in San Francisco by Dionne Fonoti
Na ‘Ono o ka ‘Aina: Delicacies of the Land – in the lo’i (taro patch) with Hawaiian production team Joan & Puhipau of Na Maka o ka ‘Aina
Pacific Music Awards
Tuis to Scribe & Te Vaka
Pan-Pacific musicians Te Vaka and Samoan-kiwi rapper Scribe dominate Aotearoa’s 2008 Pacific Music Awards.
Scribe takes the Tui for Best Song and Best Male Artist with Say it Again from his new album Rhymebook.
11-piece Te Vaka won Best Group and Best Album for Olatia.
“Pacific music has been a trailblazer for race relations, social responsibility and expressing human joy in Aotearoa and the Pacific region,” says Pacific Music Awards Chair Rev. Mua Strickson-Pua.
Scribe: Say it Again
Scribe’s Say it Again music video showcases his cousin, R&B diva Tyra Hammond, in a retro tribute to kiwi 60s pop. The open features New Zealand TV icon Peter Sinclair from the classic music show C’mon.
Say it Again is produced by Auckland’s Zoomslide and directed by prolific kiwi music video maker Adam Jones.
London Native American Film Fest Seeks Films
Native Spirit Festival 2008
Film & Video Festival of the Indigenous Peoples of the Three Americas
London Oct 08
Deadline: 31 Aug 08
Call For Entries
Native American films come to screens around London this Spring at the second Native Spirit Festival, founded in 2007 by Mapuche artist Freddy Treuquíl to educate the British public about indigenous life and issues in the Americas.
Directors and Producers are invited to submit films on DVD, any year of production.
As severely under-represented people in the global film and media industries, the festival is seen as a much-needed platform to celebrate and explore indigenous life and demonstrate that although these communities are culturally diverse, they share common views and plights; above all, their unique spiritual relationship with the natural world and their struggle to maintain their cultural identity in the face of modernisation and the encroachment of mainstream western culture.”
Wairoa Maori Film Festival
Little Town – Big Films
Wairoa Maori Film Festival
Matariki Queen’s Birthday Weekend
30 May – 2 June 2008
The tiny town of Wairoa (population around 4,000) on the East Coast of Aotearoa’s North Island opens its third Maori film festival with tributes to indigenous film pioneers, classic features, and a feast of international and local native films.
The festival features films by Maori film elders Barry Barclay and Don Selwyn, who died during the past year.
Opening night kicks off with the kiwi comedy classic Came a Hot Friday, starring Maori comic icon Billy T. James (1948-1991) and Don Selwyn (1936 – 2007) in an early acting role.
Audiences will see rare screenings of Barry Barclay’s feature documentary The Neglected Miracle, exploring indigenous genetic conservation initiatives around the world, and episodes from his landmark television series Tangata Whenua.
Recent dramatic features include Native American filmmaker Sterlin Harjo’s Four Sheets to the Wind, Taika Waititi’s Eagle vs Shark and Peter Burger’s The Tattooist, alongside older work such as Sam Pillsbury’s Crooked Earth and Gaylene Preston’s Ruby & Rata.
Closing night feature is Geoff Murphy’s classic Utu starring Anzac Wallace and the late great Wi Kuki Kaa.
Short film programs include Pollywood 08, a collection of shorts by Pacific Islander filmmakers, A Little Bit of Black Business from native Australia, Maori Short Films, and the Matariki Short Film Collection, an eclectic mix of seven indigenous shorts from Aotearoa, USA and Australia.
Wairoa Maori Film Festival goes on the road to Auckland, Wellington and Taumaranui later this year.
Chamorro Rock
Mud: Should’ve Known
Chamorro/Pilipino rock band Mud’s first music video debuts on You Tube and premiers at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival 03 May 08
The video was made by a Pacific Islander team – director Alex Munoz (Chamorro) and producer Karin Williams (Aotearoa/Cook Is) – with a mostly Guahan/Pinoy posse including editor AJ Calomay (editor: Black Eyed Peas, Native Guns).
Mud is Nikki Aclaro (vocals, guitar), Alan Kao (guitar), Ralph Blas (bass), Jared Cruz (drums) and Aris Nicholas (keyboard).
The Guam band, now San Francisco residents, signed with Talking House Productions.
Their new album Yearbook launches April 15.
Barry Barclay Honored
Indigenous film pioneer Barry Barclay (Ngati Apa) was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the first World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference on 28 March 08, five weeks after his death in Aotearoa.
Barclay was posthumously awarded the inaugural Te Puni Kokiri Lifetime Achievement Award for Indigenous Television Broadcasting, Te Rerenga Tahi. His daughter Belynda, son Matt and partner Heather accepted the award on his behalf.
Maori TV’s Jim Mather said, “Barry Barclay sought to shed light on the international struggles shared by Indigenous peoples to retain autonomy over their own image by offering alternatives to the largely stereotypical representations of these cultures.”
World Indigenous TV Conference
Maori TV’s Julian Wilcox pitches WITBC
Maori Television hosts the first gathering of global indigenous TV executives in Aotearoa 26–28 March 2008. The World Indigenous Television Broadcasting Conference (WITBC) kicks off in Auckland with three days of presentations by broadcasters from Canada, Ireland, Scotland, Taiwan, United States, Australia, Wales, and Aotearoa.
WITBC ’08 inaugurates an international association of indigenous TV broadcasters and presents its first lifetime achievement award.
Maori TV launches its new Maori language channel, Te Reo, to coincide with the event.
PIs MIA @ WITBC
NZ: Pacific representation ‘misses out’ at indigenous media conference
26 Mar 08Just two Pacific Islands will be represented at the opening today of the world’s first indigenous television network conference.
Fiji and Hawaii are the only delegates from 22 Pacific Island states and territories at WIBTC 08 …
Registration costs at the conference are around NZ$1600, raising barriers to Pacific Islanders already facing high airfares from remote communities.”
HOLLYWOOD HULA ::: Pacific Islander Film Hui 
1 comment