Shedding light on the transgendered in Hawai'i

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

Hinaleimoana Wong performs a traditional dance in a scene from "Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place," a one-hour documentary premiering Sunday at the Hawai'i International Film Festival. Lynn Mayekawa © ZPI 'Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place' 6 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 9 Honolulu Academy of Arts theater Also: A reception party for the film will take place at The Maze, 2255 Kuhio Ave. (Waikiki Trade Center, second floor) Sunday. Doors open at 7 p.m., show begins at 9 p.m., dancing until 2 a.m. The event includes performances by transgendered hula halau, the Iona Pear dancers, Cocoa Chandelier and others, pupu, deejays. For 21 and older. $10 general, $7 advance; half off for those with "Ke Kulana He Mahu: Remembering a Sense of Place" ticket stubs; free for those with HIFF delegate passes. 945-0996.

There are a good number of visits to Waikiki nightclub Fusion for on-stage and behind-the-scenes glimpses of its high-energy transgendered shows. In other sections of the film, choreographer Sami Akuna alternately stages a modern dance piece for the Iona Pear Dance Company and flaunts his on-stage drag queen alter ego Cocoa Chandelier. There's even an intensely personal, at times heartbreaking, look at the complex relationship between a Bible-quoting mother and the drag-queen son whose lifestyle she is struggling to accept.

At the heart of the film, however, is a topic filmmakers Xian and Anbe never set out to explore when they began work on the self-financed $200,000 documentary last November: How the marginalization of the mahu (Hawaiian for homosexual) subculture in modern Hawaiian society is really a reflection of how Western culture has all but obliterated traditional Hawaiian values of inclusion. And traditional Hawaiian values in general.

"The drag queens that we originally interviewed led us to other people who led us to the scholars and oral traditionalists who are in the film," Xian said.

These include University of Hawai'i-Manoa Center for Hawaiian Studies director Lilikala Kame'eleihiwa, Kua'ana Student Services director Ku'umeaaloha Gomes, oral traditions expert Kimo Alama-Keaulana and political scientist Jon Goldberg-Hiller. "All of the scholars that we talked to were telling a similar story," she said.

That would be historically documented, yet largely buried (at least in most Hawaiian studies classes), proof of the transgendered's very real and very accepted place in ancient Hawaiian society.

Kame'eleihiwa, for example, talks about the aikane tradition allowing same-sex physical and emotional intimacies as an accepted practice among kanaka maoli (Native Hawaiian) chiefs.

Gomes laments the passing of acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality in the Hawaiian community as proof of how Western values have infiltrated and revised traditional Native Hawaiian standards of acceptance for all.

"We began realizing that this was way too big of a story to pass up," said Xian, who together with Anbe and Honolulu-based film company Zang Pictures decided to refocus and expand the documentary to look at the cultural and historical aspects related to being transgendered in Hawai'i, and how that related to the larger issue of Western colonization.

For her own additional research, Xian dug into every traditional and alternative text of Hawaiian history she could get her hands on to find truth and balance to what was being collected in her filmed interviews.

"We were working with a history that is not acknowledged," Xian said. "And that's kind of scary."

After completing production of the documentary in March, Xian and Anbe asked the scholars and community leaders whose stories lent the film its new-found focus to lend it a name as well.

"Loosely translated, it means 'the rank or status of being mahu,'" said Xian, of the title, "Ke Kulana He Mahu."

Shot entirely in digital video, the finished film has garnered the praise of Maui musician Keali'i Reichel — who lent several of his songs, including "Kawaipunahele," to the film's soundtrack — and "Requiem for a Dream" director Darren Aronofsky, who called the documentary, "... moving and eye-opening."

While proud of the depth of their completed work, Xian and Anbe agreed that "Ke Kulana" only touches the tip of a number of subjects relevant to Hawai'i's transgendered community — among them, same-sex marriage, HIV and AIDS — leaving room for further exploration by other documentarians.

"I would like this to be a calling card for other filmmakers — hopefully and ideally, kanaka maoli filmmakers — who will see our film, say, 'Hey, I can do better than that,' pick a topic ... and build off of the issues we touch on," Xian said. "Because we're really just outsiders.

"What this film is really urging is that it only hurts indigenous people when they allow outside influences to separate (smaller) communities within their community from the larger community. When the mahu community is separated out from the greater kanaka maoli community, it hurts them in ways that aren't readily known."