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2024 Hui Mo'olelo Film Festival
Saturday, Apr 27, 2024 (3-5 PM) Free ProArts Playhouse: 1280 South Kihei Road, Kihei HI 96753 The result of our most recent call to artists, a new collection of films was recently unveiled stemming from the Hui Mo'olelo program partnership amongst the County of Maui, Hale Hōʻikeʻike at the Bailey House / Maui Historical Society and Maui Public Art Corps. Free to the public, the event was emceed by the stunning Sissy Lake-Farm of Hale Hōʻikeʻike. Audience members experienced the premiere of 7 individually animated talk-story excerpts, each between 3 to 5 minutes in length, as well as an offering by Maui Public Art Youth Task Force members Kekaulaiwi Farm & Kawai Garcia, a surprise performance by Anthony Pfluke & Uncle Kevin Brown, project films exemplifying multidisciplinary Hui Mo‘olelo projects and audience reflections to conclude the event. Please enjoy the program below. |
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The word hui translates to club, association, joint ownership, team; to form a society or organization; to congregate. The word moʻolelo means story, myth, legend and history, and is derived from the words "moʻo" and "ʻōlelo", or the succession of speech, as stories of the Hawaiian people were traditionally passed down orally.
Click the image for a 5-minute overview of our Hui Mo‘olelo program partnership with the Maui Historical Society and the County of Maui, which helped us set the stage for the Film Festival. Film by Matt Pierce | Project page HERE. |
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"But they were speaking ‘Ōlelo Hawai‘i. I said no but you folks were speaking Hawaiian. How come? I don’t understand. You know. I looked confused, I know because I was. Then they explained. Uncle George in his middle and late 70s, said that this is what PTSD was for him. That he remembers as a little boy, about 7-8 years old, the whole household spoke Hawaiian. The military came in, grabbed his mother by her hair, punched her out, dragged her outside, for speaking Hawaiian. He witnessed that. Then he went out there. He was crying, Chasing his mother outside. And when he was out, he saw his father was tied up to a pole all beaten." Film by Richard O'Connor | Project page HERE.
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Immediately following the animated film above, we shared this project documentary detailing a mural inspired by the same audio recording between Aunty Nanifay Paglinawan & Pualani Enos.
Entitled "From the darkest coals are born the brightest stones," the mural was painted by Oscar Lett and is grounded in ‘Ōlelo No‘eau: Pipili no ka pīlali i ke kumu kukui (The pīlali gun sticks to the kukui tree: Said of one who remains close to a loved one all the time, as a child may cling to the grandparent they love). Film by Matt Pierce | Project page HERE. |
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"There’s a place out on the east side called Kalua O Kāmohoaliʻi. All the stories of interactions with Kāmohoaliʻi all had the common thread of he would appear in times of peril, and he would hang around until the people were safe. Then he would disappear off. And that was consistent with this really benign story that Tutu used to tell me in Waipio valley. They huli’d their canoe and this shark came and hung around until they got to the Muliwai back safe on land. And when I read that on Kahoʻolawe that that was Kāmohoaliʻi, I don’t know if that was tendencies of sharks. But that gave me chicken skin to think that - was that Kāmohoaliʻi that Tutu was experiencing and didn’t know? Because her Uncle was with her, and he would tell her 'No worry, the shark is your ʻaumakua, you ain’ gotta worry'". Film by Richard O'Connor | Project page HERE.
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"His eyes came like half a dollars: 'you know how to play slack key?' I said “yeah dad, I practice on my teacher’s guitar at school'. He tell me 'go in my bedroom, under the bed, you bring my guitar to me'. So I go under the bed and bring it back to him. The first song I played for my father was Ulupalakua. I did instrumentals, slack-key and it’s the first time I saw tears in my father’s eyes. So I went on with Ulupalakua. I stopped and he looked at me 'You know boy, if I buy you this guitar, you have to make a promise to me. From this day, you never stop playing slack-key'. And I was like 'oh yeah dad, I promise!' It was such a, it was kept so much a secret, that the tunings was not revealed. Everybody that played, never showed it." Film by Richard O'Connor | Project page HERE.
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"And then you know when you have crazy cousins that think that they’re gonna be Superman and tie the towel around their neck and jump off the roof (laughs) of the house you know she’s got to figure out how to how to take care of them... and I can’t tell you what the concoctions were that she put together, but most definitely around the house were ʻuhaloa for sore throat... and ʻihiʻihi, when you eat it it’s warm when it goes down... we gathered koʻokoʻolau tea and prepared it and had it almost every day. Popolo, aloe, Kukui, um, those are the things I remember." Film by Richard O'Connor | Project page HERE.
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"There’s all the Lānaʻi horror stories when we would go camping with family over there. There’s all the horror stories that we’d hear about, through you know local lore on Maui. But I remember one time very vividly we were all in the tent already, getting ready to go to bed, you know, doing shadow puppets, having some hot cocoa and stuff like that. But um, either my dad or my mom, you know, they started hearing drums go off. You know, everyone knows where this is going right? Night marcher story right? We were inside the tent I remembered though, I just remembered me and Neal are crying. Mom’s trying to hush us up, she’s trying to keep us occupied. Mom had a flashlight and she was making shadow puppets and trying to keep me and Neal occupied doing that." Film by Richard O'Connor | Project page HERE.
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"My family has lived in Waiehu for more than a hundred years. My tutus five generations back from me grew kalo, they were fisherman, they lived along the coastline from lower Waiehu to Paukukalo growing taro, raising fish in the ponds and fishing in the ocean. There was a story that my mother told me, that my cousins and I didn’t put together until recently, about our big tutu. He didn’t want to go to Kalaupapa, so he escaped and they found him about three months later and took him back to Kalaupapa - but this is the big tutu who swam away with the sharks, which, we’re told is one of our ʻaumakuas. He swam away with the sharks because he didn’t want to be taken away by authorities who said he had leprosy." Film by Richard O'Connor | Project page HERE.
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"Minerals need protection. Our minerals need service and I want to be of service to protecting and understanding them. I’d barely begun to understand what that means but it just felt really strong and in my heart and then oh, I’m hapai, what am I gonna do about this commitment I made, you know to to protect our pohaku and minerals, like I’d only begun to begin to learn [laughs] so, how, how you know, but now I gotta be a mommy and focus on that but it occurred to me afterward, after giving birth, and you talking about how stones are birthed, oh, now I have empirical knowledge of that process." Film by Sasha Hercik | Project page HERE.
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Fun Facts:
The collection of 6 films by Richard O'Connor are rooted in ʻōlelo noʻeau: #2658: Pipi holo kaʻao (It is sprinkled, the tale has fled) | This is used at the end of a tale to indicate that it is finished.
Anthony Pfluke first met Uncle Kevin Brown during a community consultation for his 2023 Maui Public Art Corps project, E Ola ʻĪao. During their community consultation for this project with artist Richard O'Connor, they asked if it would be OK to perform together for the very first time at this event. We just about lost our minds we were so excited.
As part of her required community engagement for this project, Sasha Hercik led a flip book animation workshop at Baldwin High School. We later found out that she spent 2 months working on her nerves for this event, and she could not have shown it less. She is a total and complete boss lady.
The collection of 6 films by Richard O'Connor are rooted in ʻōlelo noʻeau: #2658: Pipi holo kaʻao (It is sprinkled, the tale has fled) | This is used at the end of a tale to indicate that it is finished.
Anthony Pfluke first met Uncle Kevin Brown during a community consultation for his 2023 Maui Public Art Corps project, E Ola ʻĪao. During their community consultation for this project with artist Richard O'Connor, they asked if it would be OK to perform together for the very first time at this event. We just about lost our minds we were so excited.
As part of her required community engagement for this project, Sasha Hercik led a flip book animation workshop at Baldwin High School. We later found out that she spent 2 months working on her nerves for this event, and she could not have shown it less. She is a total and complete boss lady.