Father Geek here with our "other" reporter covering the Hawaiian CINEMA PARADISE fest, Albert Lanier, annnnnd he's got together a group of "important" films you should try to catch IF they ever find their way to a screen near you. (Most likely at a festival like this one, or on a college campus) At any rate ol' Father Geek here has seen some of these and while they aren't loads of laffs, they DO provoke thought, another brain function many of us turn off way to often. Seriously, these are some really good films that deserve to be seen...

Honolulu's CINEMA PARADISE Independant Film Festival

by Albert Lanier

The second thru fourth days of Cinema Paradise-the independent film festival held in Honolulu from Sept 19-25-featured more shorts as well as some potent documentaries, worthwhile experimental films and crazy martial arts films.

The fledgling festival appears to be growing by slight leaps and bounds. Attendance is already up from last year in the first three days of the festival alone.

The fest is also initiating awards this year which will be given at an award ceremony and closing night party at the W Hotel in Waikiki on closing night, Thursday September 25.

There are two categories of awards-Competitive and Audience-with 5 awards in each category going to Best Feature, Best Documentary, Best Short, Best Animated film and Best Experimental film.

In addition, a special cash award of $5,000 known as the Hale Ki'i oni'oni award will be bestowed upon a local filmmaker who has produced a Hawaii-lensed independent film.

A three person jury consisting of Hawaii Film Office Director Donne Dawson, local director Edgy Lee and University of Hawaii Academy for Creative Media Information and Computer Science (essentially the new film school here in Hawaii) bigwig Peter Britos.

The festival itself is split into ten major programs including competitive categories for Feature, Short, Documentary and Animated films along the Island Visions programs showing local films made by Hawaii filmmakers, Black Belt Theater for Kung Fu fanatics, Beyond the Reef which takes a look at surfing and Hawaii's culture from a different perspective, Flash TV which features digital animation shorts from across the globe and an Expe! rimental Film section.

Anyway, enough foreplay. Time to get it on...so to speak.

Day Two of Cinema Paradise featured a stronger overall line up of films including some terrific docs.

The afternoon started for me with a subprogram of shorts-the third of the bunch shown in this year's fest.

Saturday's selections of shorts were more melodramatic and nostalgic-a mixed bag for me ( I can take nostalgia but I generally hate melodrama)-though a couple of films were worth looking at.

DOUBLE NEGATIVE-which had its World Premiere here at Cinema Paradise-was a well made flick about a 12 year old boy with OCD who usually divides food and objects into twos and meets a girl who likewise has OCD but seperate everything into threes. Nice, crisp cinematography here as well as solid performances from the young ! cast. Direction by Stig Tue and Walin Storm seems assured and effective.

Eric Tower's SUNDAY PAPER was another fine short most told in flashback through an elderly man's perspective as he thinks back to a sliver of his youth as a young boy who makes his own time machine. Once again, effective photography and decent performances from young actors. A charming and slightly amusing film.

The docs were really engaging and watchable on Saturday with a couple of titles that documentary fanatics should be on the lookout for-if you haven't cought them at your local festivals,

CATCHING OUT, directed by Sarah George, is a scenic wonder of a doc that examines the journeys and wonderings of railroad tramps and railriders.

The film features gorgeous views of parts of Oregon and California as seen from the vantage point of boxcars. The different railriders interviewed range in age from the fortiesh Lee to twentysomehing Jessica. These tramps speak of the joy and freedom of the open road, the beauty of the numerous states they get to see while riding trains as well as the sharing and hospitality experienced from other tramps and hobos.

CATCHING OUT does an able job in documenting a American tradition that still finds life and meaning with the hearts and minds of varied souls in this nation. The direction is sure footed, the editing effective and interviews funny and worth watching.

The short doc THE VEGGIE VAN VOYAGE was a personal favorite of mine. The film's director Joshua Tickell was a student at the New College of Florida who converted vegetable oil along with Methanol and Lye to produce a biological grade of diesel fuel which is said to be non-toxic and used this diesel to power a van he drove across the country for ! two and a half years. In fact, he would pull up to fast food places, ask for oil and suck the oils into his onboard conversion plant.

THE VEGGIE VAN VOYAGE is straightforward in talking about biodiesel and briefly documenting the long trips taken by Tickell from 1997 to 1999. An unpretentious film shot on video that nonetheless elicited laughter from the local audience, THE VEGGIE VAN VOYAGE makes enough of an argument for weaning Americans away from fossil fuel dependence on oil to power automobiles.

FLAG WARS is a solid, PBS-style shot and edited doc on Old Towne, a largely black neighbrhood in Colombus, Ohio that has seen a growing influx of gay white residents and homeowners arrive to fix up and renovate homes.

The doc adequately acts in a fly in the wall manner in documenting some of the tensions and resentments felt by some Black residents who point out the financial i! nequities apparent-whites can get home loans to help capitalize renovations and remodeling work while blacks are largely shut out of the loan game and some often have little to no moneys available to them to take care of their houses.

FLAG WARS is the kind of middle of the road, television friendly doc most people are used to watching on PBS or cable. As such this film is nothing special just a decent piece of fimmaking. Director Linda Goode Bryant recieves credit here for making a interesting doc but nothing more.

Nighttime viewing proved highly pleasurable for this reporter due primarily to two features-DRUNKEN MONKEY and BOMB THE SYSTEM.

DRUNKEN MONKEY recieved its U.S. Premiere at Cinema Paradise to a capacity crowd who were on hand to witness a Shaw Brothers Kung Fu fight fest at its silliest.

Directed by Lau Kar Leung, the story essentially starts out centering on brother Pao and Bill who both work for a delivery company. Pao betrays his brother by siding with the film's main villain and tries to murder his brother.

After helping to ram his brother off a bridge into waters below, Pao thinks that Bill is dead.

The film then shifts to two characters-the son of a fairly well-to-do businessman and his very young Granduncle. The businessman's son wants to write a book on Monkey stances in Kung Fu namely the Monkeyfish stance not study in school and then take over his father's business.

Both the young man and his granduncle end up traveling to find a Sifu or Master who wiil teach them the Monkeyfish stance. Meanwhile Bill has survived his near-death experience and is living with his daughter Mandy in a secluded wooded area.

The granduncle follows Mandy one day and sees both ! doing various Kung Fu moves. He tells his grandnephew about it and two ventures out to Bill's hideway and try to convince him to teach them Kung Fu.

However, minions from the delivery company now turned trading firm kidnap Mandy. Bill along with a cop that he previously met briefly track down Mandy and face Bill's brother Pao who has drugged Mandy with opium and threatens to rape her if they try to get near him.

Nonetheless, Bill and the Cop fight Pao and other goons and the cop ends up being killed.

Bill and Mandy wind up staying with the businessman's son and his granduncle at the family's home. Mandy manages to recover and pull through and Bill sternly begins to teach Kung Fu to both young men.

Eventually, Bill, Mandy, the granduncle and his grandnephew take on Pao, his partner and their small army of henchman who have turned the Deliver! y company into a Trading Firm which they use as a front to smuggle opium.

The bad guys get smashed. The good guys win. The End.

DRUNKEN MONKEY is a blast, another sublimely loony martal arts film with fun action sequences and a ragingly overt sense of humor. Don't look for any historical accuracy or a social subtext-you wont find it in this film.

On the other hand, BOMB THE SYSTEM is more sobering and intense look at the world of Graffiti artists who scour the streets of New York City looking for exterior walls of buildings to serve as a canvas for their spraypainted form of artistic expression.

BOMB revolves largely graffiti "writer" Blest who's finest "pieces" are often the subject of newspaper articles and photographs. Blest and his two friends have become the target of cop Bobby Cox of the legendary NYPD Vandal Squad and ! the young tagger soon has to evaluate whether he should leave New York and go to Art School in California or stay and spraypaint his way to further notoriety.

Stylishly directed by young filmmaker Adam Bhala Lough, BOMB THE SYSTEM skillflly traverses its urban terrain and submerges the audience fully into the world of graffiti writers. Shot on film with vibrant and vivid field of color permeating its scenes, BOMB THE SYSTEM wisely utilizes its style agressively to gird its simple and accessable narrative.

The third day of the fest turned out to be even stronger in the doc department-most of the films shown on Sunday were Documentaries-especially near the end of the day with the screening of the powerful Brazilian doc BUS 174.

I began the day with some Experimental films. I liked two films-Mary Vollero's I-99 which lays down audio snippets of comments from people expressing their displeasure or approval about a new highway in the mid-section of Pennslyvania while various still photos of the dregding and construction of the project appear on screen one after another due to dissolves and Anita Salomone's EXPRESSLESS WOMAN about an attractive blond woman who mentally struggles with her sexy image while a couple of men eye her and dreamily project their own blatantly sexual desires and lusts onto her persona.

HOOKED: THE LEGEND OF DEMETRIOUS "HOOK" MITCHELL was the first doc of the day. The film's subject is a blazingly talented basketball player who came out of West Oakland, California and might have been a NBA star but who spiraled into a tornado of drug addiction and crime and wound up doing time in prison for robbery.

We see Mitchell playing in a Basketall game at the California Men's Colony prison at the start of HOOKED. Interview with NBA stars from Oakland such as Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, Brian Shaw and Antonio Davis along with Mitchell himself tell a story of a man with great basketball ability who wound up hanging out with drug dealers at early age, doing drugs as a kid and basically bottoming out as basketball player at a California Junior College and opting to feed his cocaine addiction.

Directors Michael Skolnik and William O'Neill shape a compelling cautionary tale in this doc and utilize interview footage and news segments and other video of Mitchell's astounding leaping slam dunk ability well here.

DIRECT ORDER playing at 4:15 was a sobering and fiercely provoking documentary about an Anthrax vaccine administered to more 400,000 servicemen and women over the past few years especially in the U.S. Army and Air Force.

Officers and enlisted personnel were required to take the shot. Refusal warranted a possible courts martial, jail time and a dishonorable discharge if convicted of insubbordinate behavior.

The vaccine was supposed to project members of the U.S. armed forces from biollogical warfare and deadly bacilluses spread by enemies but ended up causing a raft of illnesses and symptoms including chronic fatigue and blackouts.

Technically this vaccine was adulterated and should never have been shipped across state line (normally, a federal offense).

What's worse, the FDA never approved the vaccine for usage and the federal agency shut down the Vaccine's manufacturer Bio Port( which had a contract with the federal government to make the vaccine for the military) in 1999 for failing to meet over 30 basic FDA requirements.

An engrossing doc, DIRECT ORDER is narrated by actor Michael Douglas and directed by! Scott Miller. Miller does a fine job of compiling interviews with Air Force and Army Reserve officers and enlisted men and woman and combines these sad and painful recitations of sicknesses and tearful anger at betrayal from from their respective branches along with slick, military comercial like footage to underscore the images and illusions of a military that promises to take care of its personnel and the harsh realities of broken dreams and wrecked lives.

Hawaii filmmaker Stephanie Castillo's documentary COCKFIGHTERS had its World Premiere on Sunday at 5:15.

Actually a short doc film followed by extended interviews with 6 cockers or roostermen,Castillo delves into a internationally popular spectator sport largely by talking to men in the United States who raise roosters and sell them for export to the Philippines, Mexico and other country.

In the process,! Castillo unearths some intriguing facts. For example-roosters and gamefowl take about two years from birth to be deemed suitable for fighting. The birds must laso be continously cared for, given shots, fed well enough and hused in individual cases.

COCKFIGHTERS is not a sexy, flashy documentary and probably not for an audience suited to MTV style editing and thin subject matter but this is fascinating material treated with respect and care by Castillo who treats her interview subjects fairly.

Jesse Moss's SPEEDO was an entertaining and riveting film shown after 7:30 p.m. that evening.

Moss documents Demolition Derby champ Ed "Speedo" Jager who-in the course of the doc-competes in derbys on Long Island, New Jersey and Florida.

SPEEDO's great accomplishment is in bringing the world of Demolition Derby racing to life in all its dusty and muddy gl! ory and infamy. As cars zoom and careen into other, the thrills and flaws of Demoliton Derby type racing are made manifest.

The film largely sees Speedo as a decent family man who is a part of a sport where violence often creeps up along the edges (a couple of divers blow their top at speedo in the film and almost come to blows) and who experice some domestic fallout during a divorce from his wife but who loves cars, enjoys competing in the derbys and aspires to become a stock car racer.

A great subject compellingly told, SPEEDO is a smashing good film.

After 9 p.m, the Brazilian doc BUS 174 was screened.

One of the best films at this year's fest, BUS 174 looks into a stunning hostage situation in June of 2000 in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil in which a troubled young man winds up taking a handul of women as hostages at gunpoint on a passe! nger bus while police try to negotiate and SWAT teams wait to pounce.

A masterful piece of filmmaking, director Jose Padiha constructs a cinematic dossier on the hostage taker who's real name is Sandro. Sandro as a boy saw his mother killed by three assailments and left his small town for Rio. Sandro wound up homeless-a street kid-who wound hooked on cocine and other drugs and resentful at the police for killing a number of his young boyhood friends outiside a church where many of the street kids slept.

Padiha also interviews the SWAT team hostage negotiator who was on the scene that day, hostages who survived the ordeal, Sandro's aunt, street kids and friends and a social worker and sociology professor-all of these interviews and other detours to youth holdinf facilities and a jail cell or two are intercut with video especially the violent and tragic ending shown from two to three diff! erent camera set-ups and angles.

Not only do we get a dossier of sorts on Sandro and know more than the police did at the time but we gather vital intellengence on the mood of the negotiations, the social context of the street kids and attitudes toward them and we begin to understand the boiling rage of Sandro and what must be a lifetime of anger and resentment which surfaces in a situation with lethal consquences.

Padiha does what a good documentarian should-give us as much information so that we can at least begin to comprehend and understand what is flickering before us.

BUS 174 brought a powerful end to a fascinating day of film screenings.

It's fall and the filmgoing is easy here at the Cinema Paradise Independent Film Festival in Honolulu.

The fourth day of the fest showcased a nice mix of cinematic fare ranging from Shaolin Monks in America to the life and sudden disappearance of a left-wing filmmaker in Argentina.

I saw the doc SHAOLIN ULYSSES up first after 4:15 p.m. Directed by Mei-Juin Chin and Martha Burr, this 57-minute film interviews several Shaolin (meaning little forrest) monks, Buddhist practioners of Kung Fu, who have settled in America largely in the hopes of spreading Buddhism and/or teaching martial arts.

Narrated by actor Beau Bridges, SHAOLIN ULYSSES is a decent and informative visual treatise on the transplantation of this hybrid form of martial arts and religion. The interviews w! ith monks such as Monk Guolin who opened a Shaolin temple in Queens, New York are watchable and interesting though the visual style of this video doc is largely flat and uninspired (although shots of monks doing Kung Fu stances in the Brooklyn Bridge and the Las Vegas Strip are worth looking at a bit). Overall, a decent doc obviously aiming for a PBS weaned audience.

Next up was the short NGAY GIO and the doc MYSTIC IRAN.

NGAY GIO (THE ANNIVERSARY) is a skillfully made short shot on 35 mm in Vietnam by Director Ham Tran. This film darts back in time, two different flashbacks-one to the boyhood of a Buddhist monk ( who is preparing candles and food for an altar to his male sibling in the present) and to the Vietnam War where his brother, a young soldier finds fimself on the run from enemy troops.

Tran does an admirable job of moving between flashbacks and letting the images communicate the essence of the story at times. NGAY GIO is also superbly shot by DP Guillermo Rosas who utilizes shadows extremely well, turning them into a dark canvas from which springs a minimally tableau of two where only a few shafts of light peak out. Rosas also shoots daylight effectively here, enveloping the Vietnamese soldiers in sunlight and making these wartime scenes burst with a sort of visual energy.

The 52-minute MYSTIC IRAN: THE UNSEEN WORLD examines the varied religions of Iran: Islam, Zoroastrianism and the Dervishes of Sufiism. Director Aryana Farshad also narrates the documentary which traves through the cities and towns of Iran to seek out the potently mystical practices of these religions.

The doc gets particularly interesting when the filmmaker captures both male and female dervishes onscreen-individuals who seek spirtual enlightenment by ! dancing so intensely to music that they enter into a trance like state-heads bobbing up and down, arms flailing about-from which they must be brought back to reality.

Fascinating to look at, MYSTIC IRAN is a suprsigly watchable film about the religious aspects of a country many westerners may not be aware of.

Darryl Fong's martial film parody KUNG PHOOEY screened at 6:30 p.m. and proved to be a laugh riot. The story revolves around an ancient peach from China said to contain the secrets to eternal youth.

Monk Art Chu (Michael Chow) travels to San Francisco (the title card laughingly reads Vancouver, British Columbia as a blatant joke) to search for the peach. He meets up with his cousin, his uncle and a black guy who thinks he's Chinese.

In the meantime, the nefarious Helen Hu wants the peach for herself and has her henchmen Low Fat and Won T! on intimidate Art's Uncle.

Will Art find the sacred peach and return it to his homebase, Shur-li Temple? Will Helen Hu grab the secret of ultimate youth? Was AIRPLANE a comedic remake of the film ZERO HOUR? KUNG PHOOEY supplies the answers...except to the last question.

Actually, KUNG PHOOEY is a low budgeted parody that works quite effectively. Fong parodies a range of martial arts fare varying from the TV show KUNG FU to CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON.

With funny, over the top sight gags, a proliferation of hilarious puns and simply shameless performances, KUNG PHOOEY is scintillatingly silly and provides more laughs than a Steven Segal film.

The late night film was the doc RAYMUNDO about the Argentine documentary filmmaker Raymundo Gleyzer who in 1976 was kidnapped and probably killed by the Military Junta of that nation.

RAYMUNDO examines Gleyzer's life and his films (scenes from several of them including the indictment of union leaders THE TRAITORS are shown throughout the doc). We see a thoughtful filmmaker and socialist concerned about the downtrodden of Argentina and the rest of South America and Central America. A man dedicated to making sobering, critical films criticizing the poverty found in nation such as Brazil and Mexico.

Raymundo Gleyzer's mother, wife, son and filmmaker colleagues and friends are interviewed.

RAYMUNDO however seems a little like proletarian hagiography, Gleyzer comes off like a secular saint instead of just a dedicated leftist filmmaker. The audio recording of conversation between Raymundo and his son Diego (just a young boy then ) are charming at first then get a little cloying and hackneyed as hear more and more of them throughout th! e span of the film.

Directors Ernesto Ardito and Virna Molina have made a techically proficient film worth watching overall but RAYMUNDO seems so worshipful, so admiring of its subject that even when the film wind down and examines Raymundo's kidnapping by forces of the right-wing government in power, the tone seems largely sad and bitter when it should be bitingly angry and critical.

One gets the feeling if Reymundo Gleyzer had directed this film, he would have taken a more critical and uncompromising stance.