Aloha from the LOUIS VUITTON HAWAII presents the 23rd Hawaii International Film Festival (HIFF)! Here’s another preview of stellar films from around the world that we will present at this year’s HIFF, slated for Oct. 30th – Nov. 9th. With over 12 world premieres and 31 U.S. premieres, the HIFF continues to be one of the best film festivals in the world! Come join us in this statewide celebration of world cinema. Just a quick reminder, the HIFF box-office is located next to the Signature Dole Cannery 18, which is also our main venue for the festival this year! For the latest information, visit the festival’s website at www.hiff.org! See you at the movies!

All Tomorrow’s Parties
China, 2003
In a post-apocalyptic future, a ruling sect called the Gui Dao has taken over continental Asia. Zhuai and his younger brother Mian are captured and sent to "Camp Prosperity" so that their dissident minds can be re-educated.

Signature Dole Cannery 18 – Wednesday, Nov. 5, 4:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Friday, Nov. 7, 10:15pm

Flavors
United States, 2003
FLAVORS is a hilarious journey through the twists and turns of romance, work, friendship, and family among first generation Indians in America. This witty film features several storylines that ingeniously come together when the lives of all the characters converge at the intercultural wedding of Rad and Jenni.

Official website: http://www.flavorsthemovie.com

Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Friday, Oct. 31, 6:45pm
Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Wednesday, Nov. 5, 3:30pm

A Peck on the Cheek
India, 2002
A PECK ON THE CHEEK is a unique Bollywood spectacle. The film starts out as a tragic romance, then becomes a family drama and then becomes something like a Shirley Temple film and then finally into a war drama. The result is a lavish melodramatic whirlwind that blows you all over the creation.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Saturday, Nov. 1, 3:30pm
Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Sunday, Nov. 9, 6:45pm

Official website: http://kannathil.com/

Hotel Hibiscus
Japan, 2002
Young Mieko's home is the cozy, charming Hotel Hibiscus in Okinawa. "Small but high quality!" as she likes to describe it. The Kingdom of Okinawa may no longer exist but an old Okinawan saying goes "All happiness comes from over the ocean."

Official website: http://www.shirous.com/hibiscus/

Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Sunday, Nov. 2, 3:45pm
Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 12:30pm

The Hunter and the Hunted
Japan, 2003
A chance observation of a toolkit used to help fix his daughter's bicycle allows a widowed, indecisive detective to nab the elusive ‘Neko', the great burglar-philosopher whose adages alone indicate more knowledge of police procedure than the cops themselves retain.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Wednesday, Nov. 5, 7:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Thursday, Nov. 6, 3:15pm

The Grudge
Japan, 2002
At least since the eleventh-century TALE OF GENJI in which the living ghost of jilted Lady Rokujo murdered Genji's other lovers wherever they hid, resentment has been a powerful supernatural force in Japanese folklore. THE GRUDGE creates an urban legend that retools resentment as a twenty-first century terror.

Official website: http://www.cine-tre.com/ju-on/

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Friday, Oct. 31, 10:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 18 – Thursday, Nov. 6, 10:15pm

My Tutor Friend
South Korea, 2003
Second year university student Soo-wan (Kim Ha-neul) comes from a blue-collar family who runs a fried chicken shop and works as a private tutor to cover her expenses. One day she is assigned to Ji-hoon (Kwon Sang-woo), a high school boy from a rich family who cares more about his gangster side-business than his studies. Their lessons begin with many conflicts and amusement, but like all romantic comedies, end with love.

Official website: http://www.cjent.co.kr/English/ProductList/mytutorfriend/Behind.asp

Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Wednesday, Nov. 5, 7:15pm
Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Sunday, Nov. 9, 3:30pm

Save the Green Planet!
South Korea, 2003
Byong-gu (Shin Ha-gyun, HIFF '02's SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE, HIFF '01'S JSA), a young man in the mountain ranges of Kangwon Province, convinces his circus-performer girlfriend (Hwang Jeong-Min) that a conspiracy from the planet Andromeda is approaching a critical point at the next lunar eclipse. Only an audience with the alien prince can avert disaster. The pair kidnaps Kang Man-sik, a Seoul businessman (Baek Yun-sik), whom they believe to be an upper-echelon invader.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Thursday, Nov. 6, 10:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 7:15pm

Season in the Sun
South Korea, 2002
A blessed sunny day outside the hubbub of Seoul finds the latest assignment for the thirty something Father Stefano Kim welcomed by a garden-variety, uncompromising (except when it comes to nighttime TV dramas) Mother Superior. At the same time, his Buddhist counterpart, the bonze Woonahm, greets a disconnected son whose playmates comprise those from Kim's church orphanage and from the rest of the countryside of Boriwool as well.

Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Sunday, Nov. 2, 12:45p

The Game of their Lives
United Kingdom, 2002
In the summer of 1966, the North Korean squad arrived in England for World Cup VIII. Considered 1000-to-1 buzzkills, the lightly regarded Koreans, averaging 5'5" in height, played tough and fast football and shocked the world by first tying Chile 1-1, then defeating Italy 1-0, a game considered the greatest upset in World Cup history. What happened to the team afterwards has been a thirty-seven-year mystery, until now.

Official website: http://www.thegameoftheirlives.com

Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Wednesday, Nov. 5, 6:30pm
Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Friday, Nov. 7, 9:30pm

Ascension
Canada, Japan, 2003
God is killed by another entity. The cataclysm radiated the powers of God throughout the universe. The resulting super-humans destroyed the world and made survival an insane ordeal. Three women decide to end the chaotic reign by confronting God's killer who lives on the roof of an abandoned factory.

Signature Dole Cannery 18 – Friday, Oct. 31, 10:15pm
Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Saturday, Nov. 1, 12:45pm

Lumpia
United States, 2003
Amongst the Filipino-American community of Fogtown High School, a conflict slowly sears, pitting the big-box store outfitted, tennis-playing "The Pack" with the sports logo attired, street thuggish "The Crew" against each other. And while a love tale akin to ROMEO AND JULIET or WEST SIDE STORY might present itself as a nice side dish, James and Kelly themselves struggle to execute a simple date.

Official website: http://www.lovethatlumpia.com/

Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Saturday, Nov. 1, 3:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 12:00pm

Callas Forever
United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, 2003
Is a legacy the affect of an artist's life's work or can it be lovingly orchestrated at the end of the artist's career? In 1977 Paris, Maria Callas' (Fanny Ardant) friends find out. Madame Callas is living as a virtual recluse when she is approached by an old music-promoter friend, Larry Kelly (Jeremy Irons), with an idea to immortalize her voice and artistic style.

Official website: http://www.bacfilms.com/index1.html

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Saturday, Nov. 1, 7:00pm
Doris Duke Theatre – Sunday, Nov. 9, 4:15pm

Drifters
Taiwan, 2003
From Wang Xiaoshuai, the director of BEIJING BICYCLE, comes this severe but meaningful story of modern life in China. Er Di or "Young Brother" has returned to his Fujian hometown after living and working illegally in the United States. While in the US, Er Di fathered a child with his restaurant boss's daughter and was subsequently turned in by his employer and deported. Now repatriated, Young Brother wanders aimlessly through rain-filled streets and coasts, past islands shrouded in perpetual mist, smoking incessantly, and rediscovering without enthusiasm, the corridors of his old life.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Sunday, Nov. 2, 12:30pm
Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 3:15pm

Flower of Evil
France, 2003
Claude Chabrol's 50TH feature is a master's summing up of all that he does best, set in a milieu that he has made his own. The distinguished facade of a wealthy French provincial family starts to crack when the wife (Nathalie Baye) ventures into local politics and a discontented son (Benoit Magimel) returns from a long sojourn in America. It isn't long before buried hints of murder, adultery, incest, and wartime collaboration are emerging into the open and disrupting the refined surfaces of a comfortably corrupt dynasty.

Official website: http://www.mk2.com/fleur/

Signature Dole Cannery 10 – Tuesday, Nov. 4, 10:15pm
Signature Dole Cannery 18 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 10:15pm

Kops
Sweden, 2003
When authorities deem a small peaceful town's police station obsolete, it's up to the local cops to drum up business by creating some criminal mayhem of their own. KOPS is a zany yet affable Swedish comedy following four cops (including a bickering couple, a lovesick single parent, and a wanna-be super cop) in their very desperate attempt to save their jobs. Soon, their petty theft and amateurish vandalizing lead to bigger and stupider things.

Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Monday, Nov. 3, 3:15pm
Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Tuesday, Nov. 4, 7:00pm

Noi the Albino
Iceland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, 2003
Noi is a gifted teen outcast living on a remote fjord in northern Iceland, imprisoned by the elements around him: white-mountains and impenetrable snow. Expelled from school after he sends a tape-recorder instead of going himself, Noi embarks on a series of hazardous (mis)adventures.

Signature Dole Cannery 18 – Thursday, Nov. 6, 4:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Friday, Nov. 7, 6:45pm

2LDK
Japan, 2002
In 2002, two cutting edge Japanese directors, Ryuhei Kitamura and 2LDK's Yukihiko Tsutsumi, challenged each other to the Duel Project, a competition to create the ultimate duel-to-the death - the director whose film is less popular will have to shave his head. Kitamura's ARAGAMI (playing during HIFF ‘03) pits a Samurai against a demon. 2LDK offers a far less cosmic, but far more terrifying struggle between two aspiring actresses who are also roommates and up for the same film role.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Monday, Nov. 3, 10:15pm
Signature Dole Cannery 18 – Sunday, Nov. 9, 4:00pm

Aragami
Japan, 2002
What should immediately be warranted as an inapt act, a misanthrope's generous introduction of two heavily wounded samurai into his mountain sanctuary oddly elicits unyielding gratification from the nameless survivor of the pair instead. It is perhaps most fitting, then, that the host, having never lost his inhuman mien in the first place, mind you, serves up a complimentary mortal coronary-based wound to the swordsman.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Sunday, Nov. 2, 10:00pm

Tokyo Godfathers
Japan, 2003
In TOKYO GODFATHERS, three homeless people - Gin, a former professional bicycle racer; Hana, a transvestite; and Miyuki, a run-away young girl - live together in Shinjuku, Tokyo. On Christmas Eve, the three discover a baby girl at a garbage dump. They head for the brighter parts of the city, where people are enjoying the holiday festivities, to look for the baby's parents. While they search for the parents, uncanny luck results in their meeting other people while their adventures with the baby continue.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Friday, Oct. 31, 7:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 6:45pm

Battlefield Baseball
Japan, 2003
Director Yudai Yamaguchi (who was an A.D. on VERSUS, HIFF '01), in his debut film, gives us a world first - a baseball zombie horror comedy, complete with chainsaws, corpses sailing through the air and high-kicking kung-fu antics. Based on a popular manga comic, BATTLEFIELD BASEBALL almost dispenses with the bat and ball altogether, and instead deals up a whole lot more fun in its place, mocking the cliches of the genre in a manner as spirited as it is funny.

Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Tuesday, Nov. 4, 10:00pm
Signature Dole Cannery 9 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 10:00pm

Japan Music Now!
Japan, 2002 – 2003
HIFF is proud to present JAPAN MUSIC NOW!, an inkling of the broad spectrum of music videos (oops, I mean PVs, which stands for "promotional videos") coming out of Japan today. You'll notice influences in hip-hop, ska-punk, R & B, emo, rap and good ol' rock n' roll, but of course, with that unique, Japanese twist. Yoroshiku onegaishimasu!

Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Saturday, Nov. 1, 9:30pm
Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Sunday, Nov. 9, 6:30pm

Indie Rocks the World!
Various countries, 2003
Wonderful music videos are still being made by innovative artists all the time. This year's collection of HIFF favorites includes videos from Mali, Iceland, Japan, Scotland and more. So avoid the constant commercial and answer the question, "What would it be like to experience really remarkable videos on a big screen?" Grab some popcorn while you're at it.

Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Saturday, Nov. 8, 6:30pm

American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawaii
USA, 2003
AMERICAN ALOHA: HULA BEYOND HAWAI?I takes a look beyond the usual misconceptions of the hula by exploring the personal stories of three master hula teachers in California who are struggling to preserve their culture even though they no longer live in Hawai`i.

Official website: http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2003/americanaloha/

Doris Duke Theatre – Tuesday, Nov. 4, 8:15pm

Go Further
USA, 2003
Woody Harrelson, star of CHEERS, INDECENT PROPOSAL, and THE MONEY TRAIN, embarks on a 1300-mile journey/documentary riding the Pacific Coast Highway on a painted bus referred to as the "Mothership." His mission: to promote Simple Organic Living (SOL).

Official website: http://www.sphinxproductions.com/pages/film_gofurther.html

Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Friday, Oct. 31, 3:30pm
Signature Dole Cannery 7 – Saturday, Nov. 1, 3:15pm

Masters of the Pillow
USA, 2003
Filmmaker James Hou (THE PICKUP - HIFF ‘02) returns to HIFF with the premiere of his provocative and fascinating documentary MASTERS OF THE PILLOW. Hou deftly presents the latest examination of Asian American male in American popular culture: the continued absence and emasculation of Asian American male.

Official website: http://www.mastersofthepillow.com/

Signature Dole Cannery 1 – Monday, Nov. 3, 9:30pm

An Uncommon Kindness: The Father Damien Story
United States, 2003
Narrated by acclaimed actor and Academy Award winner Robin Williams, AN UNCOMMON KINDESS is poignant biography of the legendary Father Damien De Veuster. The film traces the extraordinary life of Father Damien from his youth in the farmlands of Belgium to his humanitarian advocacy as a missionary for people stricken with one of the most feared illnesses at the time: Hansen's Disease (leprosy).

Doris Duke Theatre – Friday, Oct. 31, 6:00pm

Los Zafiros - Music from the Edge of Time
United States, 2003
This wonderful documentary skillfully weaves multiple genealogies of Cuba through the famed musical group, Los Zafiros. Often thought of as "Cuba's Beatles," the unique sounds, rhythms and styles of the Los Zafiros represent a unique moment in Cuban history.

Official website: http://www.loszafirosfilm.com/

Doris Duke Theatre – Saturday, Nov. 1, 3:30pm
Doris Duke Theatre – Friday, Nov. 7, 6:00pm

NOTICE FOR BRONZE, SILVER AND GOLD MEMBERS:
If you haven’t already, be sure to let the Membership office know which option you want: A FLASH PASS or TICKETS. To be sure you get your flash pass, respond by Oct 20th.

The Hawaii International Film Festival’s (HIFF) exceptional growth could not have been possible without the support of the people of Hawaii. Your membership enables HIFF to be a viable and essential resource to filmmakers, educators, community groups, students and audiences in Hawaii and through out the Pacific Rim. Become a HIFF member to receive the Program Guide and access to ticketing before the general public.

For more information about how to become a member, click on the link and download the PDF at the bottom of the page http://hiff.org/hiff_gen/genpages/frmset_membership.html