Event

Second Sunday Culture Films presents Pili Ka Mo‘o and Standing Above the Clouds.

Remarks by filmmakers Justyn Ah Chong and Jalena Keane-Lee, and Rob Buscher, Lecturer, Asian American Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania.

Pili Ka Mo‘o Dir. Justyn Ah Chong with Malia Akutagawa, 2022, 14 min.

Pili Ka Mo‘o follows the Fukumitsu ʻOhana, native Hawaiian taro farmers who live in Hakipuʻu, a traditional land district where ancestors once resided and their bones still remain. When Kualoa Ranch, the large foreign corporation that already owns 95% of Hakipu‘u, acquires and destroys more land that contains precious family burials, the Fukumitsus are tossed into a world of complex real estate and judicial proceedings.

Standing Above the Clouds Dir. Jalena Keane-Lee, 2023, 15 min.

The peak of Maunakea, a shield volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, is one of the world's most remote places. When the world's largest telescope is set to be built on the mountain’s peak, the development is met by a grassroots resistance movement led by Native Hawaiian mother-daughter activists, who stand to protect their sacred land.

The films will be followed by remarks by filmmakers Justyn Ah Chong and Jalena Keane-Lee, and Rob Buscher, Lecturer, Asian American Studies Program, University of Pennsylvania.

Second Sunday Culture Films is curated by Kate Pourshariati, Penn Museum Film Archivist, in association with the Wolf Humanities Center's 2023 - 2024 Forum on Revolution. This screening is presented by Penn Museum and cosponsored by Penn’s Center for Experimental Ethnography, Cinema & Media Studies Department, Program in the Environmental Humanities, South Asia Center, and Wolf Humanities Center.