* Sarimanok Series: a “Philippine” Primer
* Kraken-ka the Komodo Dragon: A Tale of Indonesia
* Judge Rabbit and the Tree Spirit: A Folktale from Cambodia
* Elephants of the Tsunami
* Kancil and the Crocodiles: A Tale from Malaysia
* Fishing for Islands: Traditional Boats and Seafarers of the Pacific

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8 June – 16 October at the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Museum

A traveling exhibit on the world’s refugees has made its way to Honolulu. “Torn From Home: My Life as a Refuge” takes young visitors and adults on an inspiring, hands-on journey into the lives of millions of children who were forced to flee their homes in conflict regions throughout the world.

The exhibit is on a national five-year tour and will celebrate its grand opening at the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center on June 20, recognized as World Refugee Day, with vibrant cultural performances, ethnic foods and more from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The exhibit will remain in Hawaii through October 16, 2010.

“Torn From Home: My Life as a Refugee” gives children and adults an opportunity to gain a firsthand look into the often challenging realities faced by refugee children and their families, and yet experience the personal triumphs of rebuilding their lives in a new land. It showcases seven exhibit areas: Home, Losing Home, Registration, Refugee Camp, Medical Clinic and Going Home.

The self-guided tour walks museum visitors through exhibit areas where they will learn about the shelter, food, medical care, schooling, and play activities of children in refugee camps. The exhibition features interactive multimedia, as well as photographs, artwork and testimonials of refugee children from countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia, and Afghanistan.

“By hosting this exhibit, we hope that children and adults in Hawaii become more aware of what is happening in other countries throughout the world,” says Loretta Yajima, president of the Board of Directors at the Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center. “We hope that awareness will help them to develop a sense of empathy and compassion, while also exploring themes such as “What makes a home?” and “What is peace?”

The Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center has partnered with local community organizations, as well as individuals from regions including Laos, Vietnam and Burma, to recognize Hawaii’s own refugee populations. Monthly cultural events will showcase each culture through food, performances, and more.

The Center has also crafted extension exhibits specifically designed to address Hawaii’s diverse immigrant communities. Children will gain traits such as understanding the beauty of our differences by participating in various projects, such as creating a peace quilt. The Center itself has galleries of hands-on, interactive exhibits that help children learn about themselves and the world beyond our Island shores through exploration and guided self-discovery.

“Torn From Home: My Life as a Refugee” was developed in partnership with Lied Discovery Children’s Museum in Las Vegas, Nevada, and international aid organizations including UNHCR, the UN refugee agency. Philanthropist and part-time Hawaii resident, Pam Omidyar helped conceive the exhibit and personally provided core funding. Transportation funding to Hawaii was provided by Unbound Philanthropy.

Hawaii Children’s Discovery Center | Torn From Home: My Life as a Refugee Exhibit

Wednesday, November 18
Korean Studies Auditorium 6:30 PM

Laskar Pelangi, is a film adaptation of Andrea Hirata’s best-selling literary work based on his childhood memories that first appeared on shelves in 2004. Set on the Sumatran island of Belitong, the film opens with the adult Ikal returning to his birthplace after a number of years away. From there it flashes back his first day at school, with two teachers — Muslimah and Harfan — who have been eagerly waiting for students to enroll at their decrepit Islamic primary school. Since the district school board has already declared that their little school must close if it doesn’t meet the ten-student minimum, this particular day is obviously a nervous affair for both teachers. Fortunately, ten students (mostly children of poor laborers) do sign up, forming a small enclave of first-graders christened by Muslimah as “The Rainbow Troops.” Besides Ikal, the eclectic group comprises an assortment of characters — mainly Lintang, a fisherman’s son who turns out to be a genius and Mahar, a musically obsessed dreamer who is never without a radio by his side.

Five years pass, and the majority of the film takes place in the student’s fateful fifth grade, chronicling the ups and downs of the Rainbow Troops through the eyes of young Ikal. The film’s sensitivity captures the struggles of marginalized citizens to achieve their dreams and the beauty of friendship and its ability to save humanity, all set against the background of what was once one of Indonesia’s richest islands.

A fave at the Asian Film Awards and the Berlin International Film Festival, 2009.

-Miles Films

IMDB Website | Independent Blog Review | Download Poster

Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Korean Studies Auditorium 6:30 PM

Tara Illenberger’s Brutus (the name given to laborers — many of them juveniles — hired by unlicensed loggers to drag lumber through forests and transport it by raft to distant destinations) is an advocacy film. It was awarded the Jury Prize in the 4th Cinemalaya Film Festival precisely “for courageously and effectively drawing the audience’s attention to the complex dynamics between the exploitation of cultural communities and the degradation of the environment.” The film, about the journey of two Mangyan children (charmingly played by Timothy Mabalot and Rhea Medina) to the lowlands to deliver a load of illegal lumber, tackles several pertinent subjects, from the degradation of the forests by the proliferation of illegal loggers to the undue eviction of the indigenous Mangyans from the fertile lowlands to the forests.The film is gorgeously shot by cinematographer Jay Abello and expertly scored by Joey Ayala, providing the film with visual and musical flair. -Francis “Oggs” Cruz

Film Website | Variety Movie Review | Download Poster

Wednesday, 23 September 2009
Korean Studies Auditorium 6:30 PM

A thoughtful portrayal of the relationship between a father and a son, Jermal explores themes of social and physical exclusion and the pain of growing up. The plot is given a unique twist by its setting on an isolated fishing platform, or jermal, in the middle of the Malacca Straits off North Sumatra.

There are between 1,200 and 1,500 such jermals employing more than 5,000 kids (ages 10 – 17) in Indonesia. Their world consists only of these rickety wooden structures not much larger than a tennis court sitting a few meters above the waves. Typically 10 workers live on a jermal, half or more of whom are children.

The work is extremely hazardous, and the average day can last between 12 to 20 hours at a stretch, lifting heavy nets filled with anchovy-like fish, sorting the fish from stinging jellyfish or seasnakes, then boiling, salting and drying the catch. The minimum stay is three months, without any time on shore. The wage is meager, with beginners getting $5 a month, while an experienced boy may get $10.

The central character in the story is Jaya, a 12-year-old schoolboy whose orderly life is dramatically disrupted when, after his mother’s death, he is sent to a jermal to be with his father, Johar. Johar, a taciturn and solitary figure, is an escapee from the mainland with a past he is determined to reject. Snubbed by his father, Jaya is left to fend for himself in a tough new environment that transforms him from a naive schoolboy into a hardened survivor. Jermal was an official selection at the 2009 Rotterdam International Film Festival. -Kabar Indonesia

Film Website | Indonesian Movie Review | Download Poster

Wednesday, 2 September 2009
Korean Studies Auditorium 7:00 PM

A double-winner at last year’s Pusan International Film Festival, Flower in the Pocket (Malaysia, 2007, directed by Liew Seng Tat, 97 minutes, Mandarin with English subtitles) is a strangely beautiful and funny ode to neglected human beings. It’s a sonnet to people who have nothing and yet seek nothing. It tells the story of two boys, Li Ohm (Wong Zi Jiang) and Li Ah (Lim Ming Wei), who are mostly left on their own by their father Sui (James Lee) who wallows in self-pity due to a failed marriage and distances himself from the rest of the world. The boys’ smiles and carefree romps around town probably mask their deeper uneasiness about their situation, in tandem with how the film’s humorous scenes are a front that soon unravel to reveal a darker second half. “Flower is a fitting debut feature that is a perfect introduction to the wildly offbeat world of director Liew Seng Tat.” -Twitch

Interview with the Director | Independent Review | Download Poster

Wednesday, 5 March
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium

Directed by Yasmin Ahmad
Malaysia, 2006, 90 minutes
Malay with English Subtitles

Ten-year-old Orked is the kind of kid who confronts bullies she sees harassing smaller children, but hides under her bed when the neighborhood girls try to recruit her to join in their game of “wedding.” Her amorous, nonconformist parents, Pak Atan and Mak Inom, are fodder for local gossip. “Malays who have forgotten their roots,” sniffs the woman next door while watching Orked and her mother dancing outside in the rain. It’s little wonder that twelve-year-old Mukhsin, whose mother has fled from his abusive father, and whose older brother has taken refuge in drunken hostility, comes to love Orked and her easygoing family. Gentler and in some ways more focused than Ahmad’s previous films about Orked and her parents, RABUN, SEPET (SFIFF 2005) and GUBRA (SFIFF 2006), Mukhsin portrays without melodrama the tender awkwardness of childhood friendship growing into first love. She also offers an affectionate, funny, occasionally critical portrait of Malay life and marriage, from a coach who seems to communicate only with gestures and blasts of a whistle, to an unhappily married neighborhood woman who sends her little girl over to relay spiteful comments to Orked. Adibah Noor reprises her role as Yam, the hefty, no-nonsense housekeeper in a household of free spirits, Mohd. Syafie bin Naswip gives an affecting, sometimes wistful performance as Mukhsin, and Sharifah Aryana Syed Zainal Rashid is a sharp and likeable Orked. Ahmad notes that Mukhsin was inspired by the poem “First Love” by Wislawa Szymborska: “In it, she wrote how the first love may not be as tempestuous or as passionate as later ones, but for some reason it’s the one that stays with you until the very end.” -courtesy of San Francisco International Film Festival

IMDB Website | Twitch Review | Variety Review

Wednesday, 26 September
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium

Directed by Auraeus Solito
Philippines, 2006, 100 minutes
Tagalog with English Subtitles

An effeminate 12-year-old who dutifully plays mother to his criminal father and older siblings experiences a crisis of conscience after befriending an honest Manila cop in the sophomore feature from director Auraeus Solito. A young innocent whose devotion to his family finds him taking the place of his own deceased mother, Maxi spends most of his days cooking and doing the household chores. In the evening hours, Maxi can often be found on the streets shopping and taking in a film at the local DVD stand with the many homeless children who seek a momentary escape from their bleak existence. When Maxi is rescued from a group of local thugs late one night by kindly rookie police officer Victor, his attraction to the kind-hearted and trustworthy Victor soon finds him torn between the criminal behavior of his family and his desire to follow a more honorable path in life. – Independent Spirit Awards

IMDB Website | Variety Review

Wednesday, 19 September
6:30 p.m. – Korean Studies Auditorium

Directed by Bertrand Tavernier
France, 2004, 128 minutes
French with English Subtitles

Holy Lola is the story of Pierre (Jacques Gamblin) and Geraldine (Isabelle Carre), a young couple from rural France who travel to Cambodia to adopt a child. The documentary-style narrative is punctuated by voice-over recordings that Pierre and Geraldine make for the prospective child. Ruminations on their experiences in Cambodia: the fervour of the Water Festival, the frustration of waiting for their child to arrive and become part of their lives, all are mixed with contemporary issues of international adoption and its implications for adopter and adoptee alike.