Works at Hawai’i International Film Festival 41,
November 2021

KAIMANA

Bishop Museum Ho‘okipa Lawn, November 5 - 28, 2021
Immersive mist-media film installation

This experience is included with HIFF41 tickets at Bishop Museum and also by separate admission to Bishop Museum.

Hawai’i-based artist Taiji Terasaki presents KAIMANA – an outdoor, walk-through art and film installation offering a cinematic work projected onto a dramatic, interactive mist curtain. Through this provocative lens, the experience conjures up the enchantment of old Hawai’i’s vibrant ocean culture, and fond memories of the Waikīkī Natatorium. Archival photographs and recently discovered film footage highlight the Natatorium’s active life and local impact, emphasizing the bonds between architecture and activity, community and legacy—between place and life.

World Premiere HIFF41 at Bishop Museum Immersive Art & Film Installation
Hawai'i, USA, 2021


WE CAME BACK FOR YOU

World Premiere: November 4 - 28, 2021

Featured in the HIFF 41 Documentary Panorama Shorts program

We Came Back for You is a film poem based on a poem by the same name by Satsuki Ina, a psychotherapist and activist who is one of the featured “heroes” in the exhibition, Transcendients: Heroes at Borders. The film features Ina reciting her poem over a montage of photographs of her during and after her incarceration during World War II, footage preserved in the archives of the Japanese American National Museum, and images of Ina’s current activism that connect the travesty of democracy then to the present-day crisis occurring on the U.S.-Mexico border, where immigrant refugee families are being separated and held in detention centers indefinitely.

World Premiere HIFF41
Hawai'i, USA, 2021


FRAGILE EARTH

HIFF XR Showcase at Entrepreneurs Sandbox, November 20 - 21, 2021

This AR experience will be FREE to the public and accessible to HIFF41 in-person audiences.

Often compared to a magnificent blue marble from the perspective of outer space, planet Earth appears almost entirely blue. This view is not far off: the vast majority of water on Earth belongs to our Oceans, which take up approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface. The other 29% consists of continents and islands.

Our planet can often seem larger than life, and vast beyond measure. But in relative terms, when it comes to climate change we are all closely connected. Global warming impacts water cycles by influencing when, where, and how much precipitation falls. Over time, rising temperatures create more droughts, floods, and severe weather. The impact of these crises are highly unequal, exacerbating gender, income, and sociopolitical inequity. 

The flowing of mist in this AR experience is a metaphor for the fragility of our collective environment on Earth. To view Fragile Earth is to reflect on the impact humans have on our planet’s delicate ecosystem.

HIFF XR: https://hiff.org/films/fragile-earth/
Plays with: HIFF XR Showcase Program