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shareTraversing American and Australian geographies, the diverse conditions and contexts shaping diasporic Pacific identities come into view through these films. As they navigate the frictions between their inner worlds and their environments, the characters and figures in these films find inner strength and innovate new creative cultural forms by drawing from their indigenous, Pacific heritage.
In this program
Kai Hali’a (Sea of Memory)
Directed by Angelique Kalani Axelrode
In a realm of abstracted and embodied memory, a diasporic Kānaka traces a genealogy of identity through kūpuna (ancestors), ‘āina (land), and ke kai (ocean).
Butterfly / Bataplai
Directed by Veialu Aila-Unsworth
Wrestling with her dream to become a makeup artist against her family’s values, Raya is visited by Papua New Guinean ancestors in a dream who point to a way forward.
Tradewinds
Directed by Mighty Island
Patrick Palomo, with his group Tradewinds, inflects jazz music with CHamoru language.
Hafekasi
Directed by Annelise Hickey
In 90’s Melbourne suburbia, a 10-year-old mixed race Tongan-Australian girl realizes she is different from her white mom, and goes looking for Tongan culture where she can find it.
Pasifika Drift
Directed by Alana Hicks
As a young Papua New Guinean/Australian man turns to crime to support his pregnant girlfriend, a proud PNG woman urges him to reclaim his heritage.
The Ali’i King
Directed by Christine Kunewa Walker
Set in the 1960’s a road trip from Utah to the opening of Tikiland in California unveils painful revelations for a Hawaiian-German Mormon family.
