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Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka‘ehukai documents women’s pro-surfing pioneer Rell Sunn. Photo courtesy of The Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema.

Local APA Filmmakers Shine at Film Arts Foundation Festival

By Justin Lowe
Special to AsianWeek

The Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema returns this week for its 18th year, featuring strong representation by Asian Pacific American artists, along with several feature-length documentaries of interest to APA audiences. Sponsored by San Francisco’s venerable Film Arts Foundation, a membership organization for independent media artists, the annual event focuses exclusively on Bay Area filmmakers.

Maintaining the region’s reputation as a center for documentary production, non-fiction films dominate the festival’s programming.

As documentary material, women’s pro-surfing pioneer Rell Sunn makes an ideal subject: an athlete, cultural activist and community-health advocate, Sunn personified Hawai‘i’s “aloha spirit” until her untimely death in 1998 after a 14-year battle with breast cancer.

Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka‘ehukai (screening Nov. 17) takes its title from the Hawaiian name chosen by Sunn’s mother in what must have been a moment of pure prescience. Sunn began surfing at the age of 4 and by the time she became a teenager was well-known and widely admired in her hometown of Makaha, Oahu for her grace on the waves. She was also an accomplished spearfisher, diving for her catch in the traditional manner without scuba gear. “Before I could read, I could read the ocean,” Sunn comments on her upbringing. “Surfing was my life.”

Sunn was a standout on the nascent women’s professional surfing circuit in the late-70s, although financial sponsorship was scant as she grappled with single parenthood while raising her daughter Jan. At 32, while on pro tour in California, Sunn was diagnosed with breast cancer, a devastating blow both personally and professionally when her sponsors decided to drop her after her mastectomy.

Jon Moritsugu’s Scumrock.

Following her retirement from pro surfing, Sunn worked as a lifeguard and provided informal beachside counseling to at-risk youth. To the kids she was “Auntie Rell,” while her stunning beauty, native pride and professional accomplishments earned her the informal title of “Queen of Makaha” among her friends and peers. Perhaps her greatest legacy is the annual Menehune Surfing Competition for kids, which Sunn established and supervised for many years.

Directors Charlotte LaGarde and Lisa Denker base their documentary on a 1998 interview with Sunn, just two months before her death at the age of 47. This segment is the departure point for Sunn’s reminiscences about her professional career and her cancer survival, interspersed with TV footage of her surfing competitions, home videos, still photos and interviews with athletes, friends and family.

Throughout the documentary, Sunn remains a fascinating, generous presence and the film never falters when she’s onscreen. Heart of the Sea: Kapolioka‘ehukai’s screening is a benefit for the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation and will feature a live hula performance.

A filmmaker in the provocative tradition of Andy Warhol and John Waters, indie agitator Jon Moritsugu’s films delight in tweaking the cultural zeitgeist. Scumrock (Nov. 16) is the latest in his line of self-produced and distributed features, offering a dystopic perspective on the pretensions of San Francisco’s film and music scenes.

Aspiring director Miles Morgan fears his career is getting too late a start as he approaches 30 and has yet to complete a film. His first project, a vague and ill-conceived short, titled Death, is in danger of foundering on his outsized ambitions and overwhelming feelings of inadequacy.

Meanwhile, neighbor and rocker chick Roxxy has ego problems on a different scale — she’s so overbearing it’s incredible the fellow musicians in her band, The Puerto Ricans, don’t abandon her entirely. When Miles’ grandma falls ill and Roxxy loses The Puerto Ricans’ gig at a local nightspot, both would-be artists face creative crises that will have definitive outcomes for their careers.

Moritsugu developed Scumrock as a nose-thumbing response to recent advances in digital filmmaking, shooting the feature on amateur Hi-8 video with a raw, intimate style. The cast is a mix of Moritsugu regulars and personalities from the San Francisco indie film scene, and offers an eclectic soundtrack by local bands.

Yong Liu’s short Thirteen appears in the Yank Tanks program.

The program In the Flickerflash (Nov. 16) features the plaintive short An Elegy to Our Small Selves by award-winning filmmaker Anita Chang (She Wants to Talk to You, Imagining Place). Also included are Buckle My Shoe, Anjali Sundaram’s ironic stop-action commentary on the world of work; the painstakingly hand-painted footage in Hands by Sanghee Park; and Waratap Pasayadaj’s black and white tribute to her Thai upbringing, Path.

Yong Liu’s driving test-disaster short Thirteen appears in the Yank Tanks program (Nov. 16), while additional works by APA filmmakers can be found in the America Re/Visioned and ManHandled presentations (both Nov. 15).

The Film Arts Festival of Independent Cinema continues through Nov. 17 at venues in San Francisco and Berkeley. Tickets and program information are available by calling 415-552-3456 or online at: www.filmarts.org.

Reach Justin Lowe at nextwavve@yahoo.com.