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Expanding on his 2019 short also named “Moloka’i Bound”, director Alika Tengan, came up with a feature film based on the same premises and with, largely, the same cast and crew, which won the Best Narrative Feature Made in Hawai’i in Hawai’i International Festival.

Moloka‘i Bound is screening at Cinema at Sea

The story revolves around Kainoa, a young man who has just been released from prison on parole, and tries to rebuild the relationships with his son, Jonathan, and his mother, Jessica who are expectedly reluctant to open up to him again. With help from his parole officer, and having already found a job in a tourist boat, he manages to get back on his feet and make the first steps towards his goal. However, his past life is not so easy to overcome, while the thin line he walks in his parole is quite easy to break,...

The 44th running of the Hawaii International Film Festival presented by Halekulani will open with “Tinā,” an uplifting drama film that marks the feature directorial debut of Miki Magasiva, and close with Sori Fumihiko’s “Hakkenden: Fiction and Reality.”

In between, the festival will pack in 92 features and 114 short films, major awards for guests including Jimmy O Yang, Hong Kong’s Sandra Ng and documentary filmmaking star Stanley Nelson.

“This year, we have the largest selection of Hawai`i films in competition in the festival’s history, are presenting multiple films that explore Indigenous perspectives, narrative sovereignty, and the nurturing of cultural identity, and additionally, we are launching a new spotlight showcasing the best in television,” said Beckie Stochetti, Hiff executive director.

Hailing from New Zealand, with dialog in English and Samoan, “Tinā” sees Anapela Polata’ivao (“Our Flag Means Death”) portray a well-respected and gifted vocal coach endure family tragedy...

The 50th Annual Seattle International Film Festival (Siff) wrapped up on Sunday and announced the winners of the 2024 Golden Space Needle Audience and Juried Competition Awards.

The festival began on May 9 and screened 261 films representing 84 countries with “62% of the feature films were created by first or second-time filmmakers; 43% were created by women or nonbinary filmmakers; 35% of filmmakers identify as a Bipoc director; and nearly 60% are currently without U.S. distribution and may not screen commercially in the United States,” according to Siff.

Siff holds two categories of competition: juried and audience based. Juried competitions include five feature subcategories including the Official Competition, New American Cinema Competition, New Directors Competition, Ibero-American Competition and Documentary Competition. Short film categories include live action, animation and documentary.

In addition, over 32,000 ballots were submitted for the Golden Space Needle Awards (Gsna). Films judged through the GSNAs are selected by audience members through post-screening ballots. The categories include best film,...

Alika Maikau's Moloka'i Bound feels like what it is - namely a calling card short that ripe for expansion to feature film. His attention to detail and ear for dialogue bode well for the longer version, which made the Black List's newly inaugurated Indigneous List that aims to spotlight indigenous film and TV makers while giving an authentic voice to stories of Native peoples.

This short snippet, which also won an Oscar-qualifying award at ImagineNATIVE, observes a conversation between young teenager Jonathan (Austin Tucker) and an older man, Kainoa (Holden Mandrial-Santos) who we come to learn is his father and desperate to forge some sort of reconnection - with the circumstances around this taking shape as the short progresses.

Maikau uses the simple steps of a school to his advantage to emphasise distance between his two characters - with Jonathan initially sitting on a wall and Kainoa at a lower level -.