HIFF 1999

1999 Festival Trailer

It’s great to welcome everyone to the nineteenth annual Hawai’i International Film Festival. It’s hard to believe that we’ve become one of the elder statesmen of U.S. film festivals, due in part to maintaining our focus as a true festival of record for films from throughout the Pacific Rim, and in part to the recent growth in the number of film festivals worldwide.

Last year, one quarter of our Honolulu audience was attending the Film Festival for the first time. I think this speaks to a welcome increase in Hawaii’ overall awareness of independent film, and also hopefully to a commitment on our part in providing a real breadth of programming possibilities, slicing a broad swath through a range of human experience. Our hope is that the windows we open on ideas, perspectives and cultures different from your own will delight, engage, enrage and provoke discussion ’til the wee hours, because film is as much about enlightenment as it is about entertainment. We think that both are pretty important.

You might have noticed some changes in the way we do things, too. In addition to the Hawaii Theatre Center as a major venue, we are so pleased to welcome the Signature Dole Cannery 18 Theaters as a major venue of HIFF. The short distance from there to the Hawaii Theatre as to our Box Office at the Shops at Dole Cannery adds up to less get around time and more movie time!

On the neighbor islands, we’re pleased to be inaugurating the Waimea and Kiluea Theaters on Kaua’i, and enjoying the equipment and environs of the newly revamped Aloha Theatre on the Big Island.

I remain deeply grateful to the hardest-working and most committed crew of staff and volunteers ever. They pull off this extraordinary event with its daunting logistical challenges like its all in a day’s work. Thanks guys! I’m also thrilled to be working with a confident and enthusiastic Board of Directors that is clearly committed to the security and strength of this organization long into the next millennium. Thanks to the board for the deep interest and clear passion.

Mostly though, I want to thank you, the bold, energetic and incredibly loyal HIFF audience. We want to represent to our overseas visitors and to the rest of the world our unique unified diversity in this program of films. Hawai’i is a special place. We hope you’ll agree it has a special film festival. On with the show!

Christian Gaines
Festival Director, Director of Programming