'Ride' helps film festival pack 'em in

By Michael Tsai
Advertiser Staff Writer

"The Ride" has proven so popular that the Hawaii International Film Festival has added two Sunday screenings. Nathan Kurosawa

With one weekend to go, the streamlined Hawaii International Film Festival is on pace to break its old attendance record of 67,000, HIFF officials said.

This year's festival features 167 films, documentaries and shorts — about 50 fewer than normal — with most of the screenings concentrated at the Signature Dole Cannery 18 Theatres.

"There have been sell-out crowds at almost every film," said HIFF executive director Chuck Boller. "The buzz surrounding the festival has just been amazing. It's never been better."

The final attendance figure will include the overflow Sunset on the Beach screening of Hawai'i-born filmmaker Nathan Kurosawa's "The Ride," which attracted a beachside audience of about 15,000 people, according to HIFF.

"It was definitely the biggest crowd ever for Sunset at the Beach," Boller said. "There were people sitting at the back of the screen stretching all the way back to the Natatorium. There was a mob of people watching from the zoo."

"The Ride" was so popular that HIFF added two screenings Sunday (6:30 p.m. at the Doris Duke Theatre at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, and 9:30 p.m. at Dole Cannery.)

Robin Shou's "Red Trousers," a documentary about Hong Kong stunt men, was also well received, drawing a sell-out crowd to the 1,400-seat Hawai'i Theatre.

The crowd for "Girl With a Pearl Earring," Peter Webber's film adaptation of Tracy Chevalier's best-selling novel, was so large, and so insistent, that Boller asked for and received permission from the studio to show the film a second time.

"We usually only get the rights for one showing," Boller said. "I had to beg."

Interest in the 11-day festival has been high overall.

HIFF's stock of 40,000 program guides was completely depleted four days into the screenings — the first time in the festival's 23-year history that has happened.

While this year's festival featured fewer films overall, a record 34 countries were represented in the selections. There were also more Hawai'i films (37) than ever before, according to Boller.

As usual, the festival served as a launch pad for several films that will run in Hawai'i and the Mainland over the next several months.

"Mambo Italiano," touted as a gay Italian "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," opens today at Wallace's Art House Restaurant Row 9.

"Anonymously Yours," an intense documentary about four Southeast Asian women sold into the sex trade as young girls, starts a one-week run at the Art House on Nov. 14.

Several other films, including "The Barbarian Invasions," "Girl with a Pearl Earring," "Japanese Story," "Long Life, Happiness and Prosperity," and "Girls Will Be Girls," will all hit theaters in the next couple of months.

On the Web:

• Screening information is still available at www.hiff.org