| By Lisa Rosen (2007) The name alone embodies three excellent reasons to show up: Maui. Film. Festival. Held annually in June since the year 2000, the Maui Film Festival takes full advantage of each of those elements, and green considerations are woven into them all. Festival founder and director Barry Rivers, a longtime Maui resident, highlights Hawaiian culture and history in the five-day affair. "My wife, Stella, and I both have [always] had a reverence and a respect for indigenous cultures around the world," says Rivers. So when he and Stella, his co-director, started out, "We decided that we would try to pay homage as best as we could to the indigenous storytellers of these islands." Such homage includes presentations of hula, chant and song at the outdoor Celestial Cinema, one of five film venues. "It's our way of dovetailing the storytelling traditions of Polynesia and Hawaii and the storytelling traditions of cinema," Rivers says. Rivers programs the entire festival himself; this year's was comprised of 46 features and 26 shorts selected out of about 1,200 submissions. He characterizes his choices as "movies that matter," and says, "I try to put together a program that I describe in broad strokes as ones that present compassionate vision and life-affirming [stories]." The resulting films can range from obscure documentaries to mainstream studio tent poles like this year's Evan Almighty, which played at the fest five days before its national release. The aptly named Celestial Cinema exemplifies another desire of Rivers: to present as much of the festival as possible outdoors. "It really infuses the films and special events with a sense of where you are," says Rivers. Situated on a big bowl of a lawn in the middle of a golf course, the Cinema offers nightly double features introduced with a presentation by astronomer Harriet Witt. Her charming stories about the stars above offer audiences a connection to the first islanders who found their way to Hawaii by the stars. Many of the panels and parties take place outdoors as well, and a free SandDance Theater screens shows nightly on the beach in the Wailea resort area. The island's natural beauty lends weight to those films offering an environmental focus. And this year, several films were made locally, including the powerful Hawaii: Message in the Waves, a BBC production directed by Tim Green and Rebecca Hosking. Hawaiians have, historically, sustained their home through sensible practices. For instance, when an area was over-fished, it became off limits until it had recovered completely. That traditional stewardship is long gone, and the film shows how its loss has been to the environment's detriment. In the film, surfer Morgan Hoesterey visits the Northwest Hawaiian Islands sanctuary, where tons of debris have washed up on the shore from hundreds of miles away. She exhumes garbage from the bodies of dead albatrosses that had confused the items - disposable lighters, toothbrushes - for food. The endless array of brightly colored trash that she creates on the beach is truly sickening. Revolution Green: A True Story of Biodiesel in America, directed by Stephen Strout, strikes a more optimistic note. It follows the story of Bob and Kelly King, who built the first biodiesel refinery in Maui in 1996 using waste oil from the island's landfill. Over the next decade, with help from business partner Willie Nelson, Texas truckers and Illinois farmers, the Kings built 10 sustainable bio-diesel plants in the U.S. Their singular vision inspires communities across the country to do well by doing good. Other moving docs included Hawaiian Waterfall Prayer by John Zak, about preserving Hawaii's heritage and environment, and The Unforeseen by Laura Dunn, about the battle over Barton Springs in Austin, Texas (this film also features Willie Nelson). Transforming Energy by Chuck Davis spotlights a group of visionaries as they take on the "end of oil," and William Gazecki's Future by Design centers on the novel ideas of futurist scientist and inventor Jacque Fresco. Sarah Robertson and Adam Ravetch's Arctic Tale, since released in theaters by Paramount Vantage, follows a walrus and a polar bear through their lives in the far North. The festival's strong documentary category also considered other types of natural imbalances - physical, spiritual and emotional. Through the Eastern Gate, by first-timers Mironel de Wilde and Julien Balmer, followed three Westerners as they searched for spiritual fulfillment through Eastern philosophies. Darryl Roberts investigates this country's notions of beauty, and the often-desperate attempts to achieve it, in America the Beautiful. But it wasn't all about the docs. Penelope, starring Christina Ricci, provided a kind of fictional counterpoint to Roberts's documentary with its story of a girl born under a disfiguring curse who must find acceptance as she is. The IFC feature, directed by Mark Palansky, won the festival's audience award for best family-friendly film. MGM's endearing Charlie Bartlett, directed by Jon Poll, won the audience's narrative feature award for its story about a rich kid who tries to help his classmates by lending a therapeutic ear (and psychotropic medication!). Movies that mattered were interspersed with parties that indulged. The annual "Taste of Chocolate" at the Four Seasons' Duo restaurant was an embarrassment of richness, complete with a chocolate fountain and a welcoming young woman dressed in little more than cocoa powder. The "Taste of Wailea" was set on the golf course overlooking the Celestial Cinema, and boasted offerings from 10 great island chefs. But for all the gala decadence, attention was still paid: Recycling bins were placed prominently throughout the area. Not too many other festivals can boast conscience and cocoa.
Even after festival's close, a ride to the airport offered an eco-friendly moment when the driver stopped off to fill her tank at the Pacific Biodiesel filling station featured in Revolution Green. MauiFest
Ka'anapali, Maui, Hawaii
http://www.mauifest.org/ |
