Filmmaker focuses on Island and U.S. cultures

By Moon Yun Choi
Special to The Advertiser

The documentary "Black Picket Fence," about two New York City youths, shows this week at the Movie Museum, and next month on the Sundance Channel. Advertiser library photo 'Black Picket Fence' 3, 5:30 and 8 p.m. tomorrow and Saturday Movie Museum, $5 Seating limited, reservations recommended: 735-8771 Also: Filmmaker Sergio Goes will introduce film; Q-and-A follows. The film also shows 7 p.m. March 8, 9 p.m. March 13, 11 p.m. March 18, 10:35 p.m. March 24, 12:05 p.m. March 29 on the Sundance Channel (Oceanic digital 646). Workshop with filmmaker "Visual Storytelling" workshop with Sergio Goes 9 a.m to 4 p.m. Feb. 28 UH Pacific New Media; $85 956-7221

He stayed up all night Monday putting final touches on a draft documentary proposal to send to New York, seeking funding. The film, he says, includes "haunting" archival footage and sound clips or a radio interview with Eddie Aikau..

In his sparsely furnished office above the Indigo restaurant, Goes props a TV monitor on top of two thick, hardbound copies of "America 24/7," a national photo book project in which a photo he shot was selected from tens of thousands of submissions. He's been working intensely on the project about the surf legend , based on Stuart Holmes Coleman's best-selling book "Eddie Would Go."

He's also assembling a more personal documentary project, titled "God Bless America: ATM Inside," filmed on a road trip across the country after the Sept. 11 attacks. He took still photographs too, and hopes to make a book out of the work.

Goes says he and Coleman are working with the Aikau family to get the documentary, tentatively titled "Eddie Would Go," off the ground.

"We're in the very early stages," says Goes. "We're putting together (a sample) tape, which is basically a collage of archival footages that I found about Eddie Aikau and about Hawai'i in the '70s." The documentary will present that era as seen through the life of Aikau.

The sample tape will be shown to the Aikau family and used to apply for grants. Goes will shoot, direct and produce the documentary; Coleman will write and co-produce. Yesterday, the filmmaking team mailed off the sample tape to Tribeca All Access, a program of the Tribeca Film Institute in New York, which connects U.S.-based filmmakers of color with industry decision-makers to get projects produced.

Goes commends Coleman for doing "an amazing job researching" for the book. Winner of the Excellence in Writing Nonfiction award from the Hawaii Book Publishers Association, "Eddie Would Go" is the biography of a larger-than-life waterman who died in an effort to save his fellow sailors aboard the voyaging canoe Hokule'a.

Even growing up as far way as Brazil, Goes had always been fascinated by Eddie Aikau. "I take this project very seriously," says Goes, an avid surfer.

Coleman said he is "stoked" to have a talented cinematographer as collaborator. "As a surfer who's been living on the Islands for some time, he will really be able to capture Eddie's spirit and love of the Hawaiian culture," says Coleman. "The great thing about this documentary is that it will not only cover the soul-surfing era, but it will explore (Aikau's) devotion to the Hokule'a and the Hawai'i Renaissance during the '70s."

Coleman is pleased Goes is producing and shooting a four-minute segment about him, his book and potential film projects for an April 19 segment on Oceanic Cable channel 16's "Hawaii's Reel Stories," a half-hour magazine program showcasing Hawai'i filmmakers.

Goes says the segment will touch upon a proposed feature-film version of Aikau's story that Coleman wants to make, based on his book. But Coleman stresses that it's still in the talking stage and no deal has been made. Goes is involved only with the documentary.

"Hawaii's Reel Stories" on May 3 will feature Goes as a cinematographer, highlighting his New York documentary "Black Picket Fence," being shown at the Movie Museum this week and airing on the Sundance Channel next month.

Stephanie Castillo, "Reel Stories" co-producer and fellow documentary filmmaker, says "Black Picket Fence," a documentary about two black youths trying to break out of the violent housing projects of New York City, is "bold and fresh, his vision original and insightful, and the images beautifully shot and sometimes haunting."

Goes' other new project, "God Bless America: ATM Inside," was shot during a road trip across the United States as he was moving back home to Hawai'i from New York City, where had been living for several years.

He drove from New York to Los Angeles, from October through December 2001, arriving in Hawai'i on Christmas Day.

Everywhere he went, Goes said, he found "echoes of war" in that the people had a relation to a past war, whether Vietnam, World War II or the first Gulf War.

"I found difficulties in finding funds for that (film), because it touched on some controversial issues and it painted a not-so-pretty picture of America," he says. "But now as I look at that footage, it becomes more and more meaningful."

Goes says the title of the documentary was a road sign that he saw at a truck stop in Tennessee. "I thought that really translated what we are going through in this country. It was that dichotomy of spirituality and materialism. It was contained in that one trip."

Goes said he expects the hour-long documentary to be completed by the end of the year. The trailer shows beautiful images of American landscapes and interesting, yet sometimes weird, interviews with colorful characters Goes met along the way. He interviewed about 15 people, but only 10 made the cut. Among them were Don Darling, an ex-zoo director and World War II veteran in Texas with a roadside snake show; Jim Enote, a Native American writer in Zuni, N.M.; Bruce Crane, a Mormon bishop and high school teacher in Logan, Utah; and Buffalo and Moonstone, a 1960s counterculture couple who live off the grid in northern Washington state. He also ran into "some racist hunters" in Alabama who asked if he was a "towel head."

As for the upcoming Cinema Paradise Film Festival in September, Goes, who is festival founder, says he is still in the early stages of programming: "We're planning on some big changes this year, and nice surprises."