Shannon Cristobal and Aiko Yamashiro felt very lucky to work with the thoughtful team at HIFF to bring together some reflection around such a critical and energizing theme of Change Makers. Our six essayists are scholars, definitely, but also as community leaders, teachers, mākua (in a parent role), guardians, farmers, artists, storytellers, activists: change makers. Their reflections contain insight, struggle, personal experience, genuine questions, and their own commitment to the work of changing our world. Click HERE to read these essays.
The filmmakers in this Change Makers program ask us to listen close and dig into complex and difficult histories and contexts. As the historian, musician, and Hawaiian activist George Jarrett Helm Jr. would say repeatedly: “do your homework.” The real people in these films inspire us to be courageous. How in are we? How willing are we to grow and change in and for the sake of the new worlds we are making? The writers of these essays remind us to be authentic to our own perspectives. The power of our unique voice is in honesty, when we speak with care from who we are and all we have been given. We invite you to add your voice to this conversation.
How do we make change? Together, when we connect one story to another—trans youth athletes to Standing Rock to Syria to radical girls of color to Mauna Kea to Korean adoptees. This offering is for us, in the hope and trust that the more we connect, listen, learn, the more we can change.
FILMS FEATURED IN 2019
AKICITA: THE BATTLE OF STANDING ROCK
CHANGING THE GAME
FOR SAMA
GEOGRAPHIES OF KINSHIP
MAUNA KEA: THROUGH THE KIA‘I LENS
WE ARE THE RADICAL MONARCHS