In his first short film, "Silent Years," Hawai'i filmmaker James Sereno made good on a promise to show a side of Hawai'i life rarely represented.

The film, a story of love, betrayal and innocence lost in a small Big Island community (adapted from poems in Lois-Ann Yamanaka's "Saturday Night at the Pahala Theater") is both jarring and lyrical — an unexpected pairing.

For Sereno, who grew up in the Kaimuki-Kapahulu area and graduated from the University of Southern California School of Cinema/Television, jostling dualities come naturally. "Being a hapa guy," he said, "I live in dualities."

As head of the fledgling Kinetic Films, Sereno has mined dramatic tension from familiar dichotomies — local and nonlocal, self and community, striving and resignation.

The approach worked with "Silent Years" and with his latest production, an adaptation of Cedric Yamanaka's "Sand Island Drive-In Anthem" (directed by Kinetic's Ryan Kawamoto) that took home the audience award for best short film at the Hawaii International Film Festival. His success has placed Sereno in the vanguard of young Island filmmakers.

Kinetic's next venture is "Growing Up Local," based on Stuart Ching's "Way Back to Palolo." Dana Hankins' Redhead Productions is co-producing, and actress Kelly Hu has committed to the project.

The film that grabbed film critic Roger Ebert's attention, however, wasn't really a film at all. It was the trailer Sereno conceived and directed for this year's festival.

In the trailer, Sereno tracked the journeys of five iconic film figures — Chinese martial artist, Polynesian warrior, Japanese gangster, Indian princess and Bond-esqe spy — as they made their way to the festival, acknowledging the festival's mission to screen the best films from East and West.

Ebert proclaimed it the best trailer he had ever seen and plans to screen it at his Roger Ebert Overlooked Film Festival.

The HIFF project highlighted Sereno's talents as both a commercial and film director: the ability to identify and creatively represent the idea behind a project and the narrative chops to tell a compelling story.

Sereno, 39, spent his early years straddling what he identifies as two very different worlds.

"I went to Mid-Pac and pretty much all of my friends went to Kaimuki," he said. "So, I'd hang out with my friends at the park playing ball and getting into trouble, but I'd also have my private-school friends who I'd study with and be a dork with."

After high school, Sereno did a couple of stints at the the University of Hawai'i before transferring to USC.

Sereno stayed in Los Angeles for a few years working for Team One Advertising and producing spots for Lexus and America West Airlines. He returned to Hawai'i in 1997 and worked as a freelance director before founding Kinetic Productions.

While Sereno may live in dualities, the success of Kinetic has been realized largely through the power of three: himself, Kawamoto and executive producer Susan Ishizu.

Kawamoto, like Sereno a former Young Adman of the Year in Hawai'i, grew up on the Big Island and attended UH. His "Sand Island Drive-In Anthem," co-produced with Jason Suapaia, was a hit with the HIFF audience, which laughed in recognition throughout much of the film before falling silent during its powerful dramatic ending. Kawamoto's resume also includes memorable spots for Hawaiian Airlines, AT&T Wireless and Organizations for People with Mental Retardation (for which he won a national award.)

Ishizu, an accomplished professional producer, oversees the commercial side of the business. "I really needed someone of that weight and experience to run things," Sereno said.

The team has earned several local and regional awards for its projects, including top awards for directing, producing, editing, cinematography, art direction, humor directing and public service announcement directing at this year's Association of Independent Commercial Producers awards.

After "Silent Years," Sereno formed a spinoff business, Kinetic Films, to pursue further creative projects.

"Kinetic Productions makes the money," he says, laughing. "Kinetic Films spends it."

But Kinetic has a serious mission.

"We want to differentiate ourselves by focusing on films that are completely homegrown," Sereno said. "All our productions are 100 percent local, from top to bottom. We've started with adaptations of stories that are written by local authors, and everybody on the productions, from the producers and directors to actors and crew, are all local."

For Sereno, "local" isn't a term of exclusion. Instead, it's a recognition of the unique cultural sensibilities shared by the creative professionals who live and work in Hawai'i.

In addition to helping to contribute to a local aesthetic of filmmaking, Sereno and his partners hope to provide opportunities for talented filmmakers to show what they are capable of doing.

"Sometimes we don't get the opportunity to work at higher positions when the Mainland productions come in," Sereno said. "With our projects, we have the opportunity to show that we can work at that level. I feel very lucky that we have the resources here."

Sereno has been approaching local investors, hoping they'll take advantage of Act 221/215 tax credits to invest in "Growing Up Local."

"The only way to get our stories out there is if we do it from the inside out," Sereno said. "Local stories told by local people, with local investments reaching a wide mass audience."