Oscar nominees set to shine at Maui's FirstLight festival
•
From foreign films to animated flicks, FirstLight has it all
By Christie Wilson
Neighbor Island Editor
Hollywood's high-stakes Oscar race is well under way, and Maui has moved into the fast lane with "FirstLight — Academy Screenings on Maui," a movie festival kicking off Wednesday at the Maui Arts & Cultural Center in Kahului.
• Wednesday through Dec. 30 (no screenings on Christmas Eve, Christmas) • Castle Theater, Maui Arts & Cultural Center • Tickets: $10 per film, or $21 "passport" for three films • (808) 572-FILM (3456)
The event, in its third year, boasts 33 Academy Award contenders being shown at the center's Castle Theater over 10 days. That's twice as many days as last year and nearly twice as many movies.
•
'FirstLight — Academy Screenings on Maui'
"FirstLight" impresario Barry Rivers said the screenings provide local folks and movie-industry types with a chance to catch hot end-of-the-year releases and revisit cinematic gems from earlier in the year.
More than half the movies to be screened will be making their Hawai'i debut, including "Ali," the much-anticipated Muhammad Ali biopic starring Will Smith, and "The Shipping News," based on Annie Poulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and starring Kevin Spacey. "The Majestic" with Jim Carrey is featured.
Rivers, whose Maui Film Festival Inc. puts on an annual outdoor film festival in Wailea and weekly Wednesday night Castle Theater showings of art house and independent movies, said it's not hard to persuade studios to show their films on Maui, even those in current release. In fact, he said, some studios approach Rivers to get their films shown here for wider pre-Oscar exposure.
"More than anything else, they know that people from the industry do frequent Hawai'i, and Maui in particular, at this time of year as much as they go to Aspen," Rivers said.
He estimated that one-fifth of the 5,000 people who turned out for last year's FirstLight screenings were Academy Award voters — directors, actors, producers, writers and technicians.
Another reason the studios like to show their movies here, Rivers said, is that Academy voters "are on Maui on vacation and in a receptive frame of mind, and because we present the films in a first-rate way."
Although Maui has 29 screens at multiplexes in Kahului, Kihei and Lahaina, Rivers calls the 1,200-seat Castle Theater the island's only "movie palace."
The films are shown on a 50-foot-wide screen with Dolby Digital Surround Sound. Rivers said Castle has the largest non-IMAX screen in the Islands.
Adding to the audience experience is the Candlelight Cafe, which has become a popular social spot for film events at the center. Moviegoers can enjoy live music, dinner and cocktails in the courtyard outside the theater, and browse art exhibits in the center's Schaefer International Gallery.
For kids, there are the ubiquitous "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," "Monsters Inc." and "Shrek."
And if you missed them earlier in the year, there's "Pearl Harbor," "Moulin Rouge" and Steven Spielberg's "A.I."
Among the releases with major stars are "Vanilla Sky" with Tom Cruise, and "Ocean's Eleven" with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, plus more obscure works such as "Ghost World" with Thora Birch and Steve Buscemi, and two films starring Billy Bob Thornton, "Monster's Ball" and "The Man Who Wasn't There."
The menu of foreign-language films include the critics' darling "Amelie," from France, and "No Man's Land," a black comedy set during the 1993 Bosnian conflict.
Rivers has his own short list of FirstLight favorites that include "I Am Sam," with Sean Penn and Michelle Pfeiffer in the story of a mentally disabled man who is trying to regain custody of his young daughter; director Richard Linklater's "Waking Life," an animated film that has been described as a cross between "My Dinner with Andre" and "Yellow Submarine"; and "Beautiful Mind," in which Russell Crowe portrays schizophrenic mathematician John Nash Forbes Jr., who won the Nobel Prize for economics.
Rivers already is busy planning the third Maui Film Festival at Wailea in June; and "Shorts & Sports — Maui International Short Film Festival" for video and film in October, at the center.
Maui Film Festival Inc. is slowing working toward profitability, Rivers said. He said he spent $150,000 in the first year of the Wailea festival buying projectors, screens, speakers and other equipment, and should be able to recoup that initial investment by the end of the year.
Rivers, a television producer and cineast, said he just returned from Los Angeles, where he is developing relationships with studios and agents, and hired a public relations firm to help promote the summer film festival. He also has a deal with Landmark Theatres, the nation's largest art-house chain, to run trailers promoting the Wailea festival.
"We're trying to tell people that small is beautiful, that Maui is an elegant, domestic alternative to Cannes," the famous French film festival, Rivers said.
Reach Christie Wilson at (808) 244-4880 or cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com.
