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During the Sundance Film Festival, Universal Cinema Film & TV Journal’s Amir Ganjavie interviewed Anderson Le the Artistic Director for Hawai‘i International Film Festival (HIFF). What follows is part of that interview.
Amir Ganjavie, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): As the Artistic Director, do you work with programmers to curate your festival?
Anderson Le (AL): So, we have programmers and program associates. I have a team. It’s very small, like three of us. But we also have the call for entries. So, we have a volunteer screening committee that goes over [the films]. They help us review the films that are entered to the festival.
(UM): Do you come to festivals like Sundance to find films for your festival?
(AL): Our festival is in the fall. This year it’ll be in mid-October. So, honestly Sundance programming is a little too early for us.
So, as a programmer, Artistic Director, I travel to some of the major festivals just to see the new films. Especially from market festivals like Sundance, or like Berlin, or Cannes. But it’s also just to meet people… Like a lot of sales agents and producers that I know, we all are also good friends.
It’s a great way to just see each other face to face. And just a lot of it is to… I think what’s important about being a programmer is to… I personally, to be honest, I don’t like to go to parties per se, I’m not a party person. But I do like to… I think a good trait to be a programmer is to be social… at the end of the day, it’s best to like make relationships and friendships and connections because it just makes the process easier. There’s a face to the festival, they know who you are, right?
Sometimes that helps when they are working on release strategies or whatnot. So, like, “Oh, yeah. Well, Anderson.” They know my festival and like they say, they can see the merit of having [their film] at Hawaii, for example.
(UM): What is the primary focus of your festival?
(AL): Our festival is International primarily, or mainly an International Film Festival. But since we’re in Hawaii, we’re in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, our focus has been, since the founding of the festival in 1981 to focus on the Asia Pacific Rim filmmakers and films from there. But lately, we’ve been also focusing on the local film community. Like really coalition building when it comes to not only the local films, but also native Hawaiian Pacific Islander filmmakers.
And also, we are focusing on really kind of championing films from the Pacific. Like from Oceania, from Polynesia, especially from the Pacific Islander Indigenous filmmakers.
(UM): So, you do not focus, for example, on European films or Asian films, but from the Pacific areas?
(AL): No, no, we do. I mean, as an International Festival, we do have like, of course, European films. If there’s a film from like Nairobi that we want, we will show it, of course, right? But we have these focuses that we want to champion.
(UM): How important is it for you to have premieres?
(AL): Honestly, it just depends if the film is good, we would definitely consider it. Of course, there are parameters, for example, we have a competition section for emerging filmmakers. For that usually, we want to have at least International Premiere or US premiere. But again, if there’s a film that has been going around the festival circuit, that we really want to champion, we’ll consider it. Just probably not in the competition section, for example.
(UM): What about screening big movies shot in Hawaii like Jurassic Park?
(AL): Why would we want to show Jurassic Park? I’m saying it’s like, yeah, there’s no need to. You know what it’s like. Hollywood, big-budget movies shoot Hawaii as the backlot, the tropical backlot, right? But those are not stories about Hawaii, about living in Hawaii. About being a resident of Hawaii or being a native Hawaiian, right? So those aren’t stories that we want to provide a light. [We want] to provide a forum for the local filmmakers, people [who] actually live there. There have been three films in a row at Sundance have been done by Hawaii residents. One by a native Hawaiian. This year was Jamojaya, the previous year was Every Day in Kaimuki, and the year before that was, I Was a Simple Man.
(UM): What about films that deal with controversial subjects?
(AL): That’s an interesting question. I think it’s on a case-by-case basis. I think those are things that can’t just be flat answers. It’s not a blanket answer.
I mean, this is not a cineplex that we just showed Jurassic Park, right? So,
it’s like, there’s an understanding with the audience that they wanted, some of them want to be challenged. So yeah, I mean, I’ve shown divisive films in the past people hated. We’re not here to make money.
(UM): So are ticket sales important?
(AL): We have many ways to basically pay the bills essentially. So I mean, ticket sales are very important, but we have sponsorships, we have grants, and whatnot. We do everything to try to underwrite things.
We’re not an experimental film festival, right? So our films are more, for example, Japanese films are very popular in Hawaii. We kind of decide what’s a good to mix. Like maybe crowd-pleasing films. And then we are very indie film, experimental films too. So we want to show a broad cross-section.
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