Hawaii delights with a 10-day international film extravaganza

by Brenda Yun on

For ten glorious days (which began yesterday), Hawaii will host its international film festival until October 25. The film line-up is chock full of Asian films as well as other international cinema delights.

This year’s centerpiece films on opening, mid-festival, and closing nights demonstrate the diverse films that make up this year’s deep line-up. The one I’d like to see is “Red Cliff” – a John Woo film that is based on the famous Chinese novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms.” You can watch the Red Cliff trailer below.

The Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF) started as a project of the East-West Center at the University of Hawai`i Manoa campus in Honolulu in 1981. Back then, only seven films were screened from six countries to an audience of 5,000. Today, HIFF is the premiere cinematic event in the Pacific that has had more than one dozen screening sites on six Hawaiian Islands and draws an audience of 80,000 or more from around the state, the nation and throughout the world.
HIFF is unique in discovering features, documentaries and shorts from Asia made by Asians, films about the Pacific made by Pacific Islanders, and films made by Hawai`i filmmakers that present Hawai`i in a culturally accurate way. The film festival also conducts seminars, workshops, special award presentation receptions with top Asian, Pacific and North American filmmakers.

Most of the films will be playing at the Dole Cannery Theaters in downtown Honolulu. For a complete film listing or to order tickets in advance, visit the HIFF website.

The sounds of travel 1: Great Lake Swimmers

by Grant Martin on

Welcome to The Sounds of Travel, music that reminds of you travel, the places you’ve been and the things that you’ve seen. We’ve all got that favorite road trip song or mix tape that brings us back to the open road, to the hills of Patagonia or to the rolling waves of the Mediterranean. Listening to these pieces back at home brings us vividly back to that same spot, years later, daydreaming about the beauty of travel, the wonderful landscapes and the luster of freedom.

Here at Gadling we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite sounds from the road and giving you a sample of each — maybe you’ll find the same inspiration that we did, but at the very least, hopefully you’ll think that they’re good songs.

Week One: Great Lake Swimmers — Backstage with the Modern Dancers

Great Lake Swimmers’ third album, Ongiara, had just been released the week before I touched down in Buenos Aires, Argentina for a week long trip with a few close friends. On the bus from the airport into the city, I happened to meet a young Canadian woman en route to her hostel. Knowing that we had a large apartment already booked I invited her to join us and with little deliberation she ended up staying with us for the entire week.

Architecture in Buenos Aires is shockingly beautiful, with narrow cobble stone streets lined with tall ceilinged, ornate buildings on either side. Apart from the exquisite ironwork and stained glass featured on many structures, you could pick up many blocks from Paris, drop them in Buenos Aires and not know the difference.

Our apartment was no exception. With tall ceilings, a broad front room that opened out into the street, an entire wall of stained glass and three bedrooms, the unit was not only one of the best but also one of the least expensive properties that I have ever stayed in.

Throughout my visit I began to explore the depths of Ongiara. At times when the others were napping, out finding groceries or buying antiques, the haunting voice of Tony Dekker filled the tall corners of the rooms, echoing through the hallways and shimmering through the bedrooms.

Now, when I hear Backstage with the Moden Dancers I’m taken back to Buenos Aires, to the young woman I met on the bus and to perching out over the apartment ironwork, peering onto the street as the fall rain blanketed around us. I see the yellows and blues of the stained glass windows, feel the black fabric on her shirt and taste the Malbec that I drank every night for dinner.

“And all of these things I don’t think they should be — released” — Tony Dekker, Great Lake Swimmers.

Band on the Run: Kitschy, Classy Drake Hotel is Toronto Arts Beacon

by Ember Swift on

Ember Swift, Canadian musician and touring performer, will be keeping us up-to-date on what it’s like to tour a band throughout North America. Having just arrived back from Beijing where she spent three months (check out her “Canadian in Beijing” series), she offers a musician’s perspective on road life.


If the merging of kitsch and class together is on the agenda for a place to stay in Toronto, The Drake Hotel is perfect. Each room is unique. The furnishings are retro and modern combined. The artwork is compelling. There’s even an antique photo booth machine that shares a room with an electric saddle ride.

But we didn’t stay there.

Honestly, it’s a bit too pricey for the musician’s salary, but it’s one of those urban hotels that are worth splurging for on a special occasion because it would be a memorable and unique night’s stay. And, well, it’s a happening place in the city and surely the entertainment within its walls would be worth absorbing. This week, for instance, it’s one of the social hotspots for the Toronto International Film Festival. Well… there’s something.

(Which film stars will be riding in that saddle, I wonder?)

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I was in Toronto this weekend for a jam party and some rehearsals. I love this city. I spent nine years living here up until 2004 and I still feel like it’s my urban home. The thing that has struck me so much since I left, however, has been the rapid changes that urban landscapes undergo. One of those changes is Queen Street West and its push towards upward mobility from artist and low-income eccentricity.

Gentrification. It’s heading west in Toronto. At least the eccentricity hasn’t been completely vacuumed away. The Drake is evidence of that fact.

Places like The Drake have popped up all along this stretch. It’s not as though this hotel wasn’t here when I lived in Toronto. In fact, it was a dive that most people I knew stayed away from. It has been around since 1890 and used to house the railroad workers that came into the city. In the eighties and nineties, it was a rough punk bar and just seemed like a seedy establishment that one hurried past if walking by late at night.

The current owner bought it in 2001, gutted the place and underwent several years of renovations before opening the space as an upscale hotel, lounge, rooftop restaurant and live music venue in the basement. Since it’s opened, the traffic to this part of the city has increased, as have the number of art galleries, cafes, and loft-dwellers in nearby newly constructed urban condos. It’s remarkable how quickly neighbourhoods transform.

Their website describes The Drake as “a democratic hub and cultural pathfinder, in the midst of a re-energized indie art gallery district.”

I can’t quite swallow the democracy here, since it’s out of many people’s price range if you’re not actually looking to stay, but I do concede that it’s a hub. It’s central to new growth and feels like a beacon of change. What’s more, it does unite rather well with the diversity of the neighbourhood as though its spot “in the midst” of so much art hasn’t been lost on the designers. They hang local artwork on the walls, have commissioned canvasses and expensive sculptural displays flanked by refurbished couches and squeaky vinyl diner stools. Indie musicians file through the basement venue while a sushi bar and yoga den take up the upper levels.

It’s definitely full of contradictions that succeed at representing a neighbourhood in the throws of change, on the cusp of new identities, on the eve of new beginnings without a desire to erase the past.

When I walked into The Drake this weekend to check out the second stage of renovations – I had been told that it had transformed into a more 30’s style kitsch look in the past year and I was curious – I spoke to the smiley front desk clerk about the hotel and its story. He seemed to smile out of every pore as he showed me the flyers and flashed white teeth in response to each of my questions. He had me smiling back, to be sure, but I wondered how happy he really was.

He spread his arms outwards to sweep in the whole of the building when he told me I was free to walk around and take pictures. Another grin and he went back to work without a word. In fact, no one seemed to mind my presence in the least. I felt a bit like a fly on the wall as I strolled into rooms I hadn’t been in for several years and took pictures and looked around. I listened in on a few meetings, a lover’s spat and a heated political discussion over a late lunch.

When I returned to the lobby, the smiling host looked up from his word asked if I had any other questions about the space and if I wanted to reserve a room. He explained that I wouldn’t be able to view one because they were all booked out (there are only 19 rooms), but he brought out room brochures that showed their diversity. As I mentioned, every room at The Drake is different. It’s not themed, per se, but several top designers were hired to design the rooms and each took a different approach. Some rooms have hardwood, some have carpeting, some have exposed brick walls and minimalist decoration and others have walls filled with unique art pieces. No art in the whole hotel is repeated, actually (sigh of relief) and each room boasts different furnishings, colours, layout and overall decorating style.

I looked at the brochures with genuine interest and told him that I’d be back in touch in the future. After all, anything’s possible.

Maybe, if nothing else, I’ll come back to socialize and get my picture taken in that old black and white booth.

Right after I’ve ridden in that saddle!

A Canadian in Beijing: Floating at Bloody Sunday

by Ember Swift on

Bloody Sunday worried me when I first heard about it. I thought it might be a hardcore women’s event that discussed menstruation and girl power, which to be honest is not for me. I mean, I’ve ‘been there, done that’ and it’s no longer my speed. No offence to all the blood sisters out there who are currently reclaiming their bodies, self-worth and sisterhood; it’s wonderful to experience this kind of transition and learning, especially about patriarchy and empowerment. For me, time passed and now I look back on that time in my life, raise my fist in solidarity and realize I’ve moved on. No crime in that. Part of that very movement is thanks to the empowerment, so credit given where credit is due.

Now, along a different empowerment path, this monthly event is about connecting the arts community here in Beijing. A woman named Pauline organizes the night along with several friends and volunteers. She works full-time in the gallery district of Beijing and is interested in combining arts media together to form alternative gathering spaces in this city. Pauline is from Belgium and she has lived here for many years and so she is very connected to the ex-pat community. We met through my friend Sarah (who I told you about in this blog.)

Anyway, Pauline asked me if I wanted to take part in May’s “Bloody Sunday” event and I agreed to play some songs. This month, it took place in the beautiful Ritan Park ??????????? at the Stone Boat Café, a small restaurant set on the water across a small bridge. It was built about twenty years ago to replicate the traditional structures often built into the water as permanent boat-shaped entertainment spots. (I spoke about a famous one of these structures when I visited the Summer Palace.) Ritan Park itself was built in the year 1530 and is one of the oldest parks in the city. I was told that it once served as an altar site where the emperor made sacrificial offerings to the sun god. By the time I learned that, it was too dark to go exploring. Maybe next time.

I arrived in the early evening to do a sound check and, of course, nothing was ready. I had brought my Chinese textbooks, however, and I was thrilled to sit on the restaurant’s patio working on my reading comprehension while the sound system was slowly assembled on the outdoor platform that would double as the evening stage. I sat right next to the water’s edge and intermittently lifted my head to peer over the railing at the families fishing or laughing as they sat on the rocks around the small lake. I even watched one man successfully pull in a large fish. I have no idea what kind of fish it was but I did notice that he took it home with him, smiling proudly. All in all, everyone here seemed peaceful and the energy was infectious. I felt my muscles relax when I hadn’t even realized I’d been tense.

I sipped tea, translated a text, eventually had some dinner at a very leisurely pace and then it was time for me to plug in my guitar and test the levels. Everything worked out fine and I sat back down again and chatted with the strangers that had taken up residence at my table. It was more of a communal table, really, since there were perhaps eight possible seats (an estimate considering two sides were benches built into the stone boat’s “deck”) and so several people came and went, almost wholly non-Chinese but from various countries. English was our common language.

Some other individuals arrived from the organizing committee and began to pull a large sheet between two trees on the shore. These were the people in charge of programming visuals for the night. As the sun slipped out of the sky, their images lit up the area and gathered a crowd of Chinese migrant workers and Sunday park-goers who gathered on the rocks and watched the silent film clips for several hours as though hypnotized. They were hypnotic, I must admit, and coupled with the music that was spinning by several dj’s including NARA (whose mixes were exquisite), they became hard to ignore.

When it came time for my set, a few of my school friends suddenly appeared to support me and I was grateful. The small area that I was facing was otherwise filled with strangers, so seeing some familiar faces was a treat. Behind me just a few paces was the water and this platform had no railing. I’m sure it was beautiful to see from the perspective of the audience, but I had visions of falling backwards with a splash and electrocution. . . and so I mostly stuck to the microphone and didn’t look behind me!

My voice carried to the tables and chairs on the shore as well, but the performance was really directed at this small area on the restaurant’s patio. The visuals continued throughout my set as well and I occasionally found my eyes pulled to watch while I sang as though I were simultaneously in two different roles: performer and audience. I had to consciously pull myself back and focus on what I was doing because the images were so compelling!

When my set was finished, (and it was very casual and consisted of both English and Chinese – quick spontaneous translations on my part – considering the very mixed audience), I walked around the site more and discovered a brilliant display of items for “exchange.” This was a pile of items that anyone could take, like a free garage sale. People were sorting through the clothing and sifting through smaller items and I’m not sure if much was taken and given a new home, but I love the concept. There was no expectation to actually “exchange” item for item, but the idea of giving away things to others is always positive, both for the person who is minimizing their possessions and for the person who is happy to acquire something new. In this way, it’s a “win-win” exchange, so aptly named.

The best feature of this restaurant was its upstairs room that truly resembled an enclosed upper deck and/or sleeping cabin in a mid-sized leisure craft. Climbing the super steep stairs was also interesting (treacherous?!) and when I got to the top, I found a young man sitting cross-legged on a couch directly facing the stairs who was offering tarot card readings. I asked how much he charged and he told me (with a French accent) that it was 100 kuai. I answered him in French that I’d be happy to have a reading if he’d take a barter of one CD. He smiled and agreed. I sat down to a fairly accurate description of my current life by a complete stranger. I do love a good fortune and this one was fairly encouraging.

I slipped him a CD later on in the evening by ascending the stairs enough to show my head above the landing and then extending a CD through the railings. I leaned it against the chair within my reach. He was in the process of giving someone else a reading and he smiled at me quietly and nodded. Another exchange.

I left the Bloody Sunday event feeling relaxed and smooth, as though the whole event had been a giant reefer for my spirit. I don’t smoke, but this kind of event felt the way I have heard friends describe that feeling; I sort of floated away into the dark night air of the park. I fell asleep soundly that night and dreamt colourful dreams filled with water and travel and painted rafters.

I felt fortunate.