Cane Fire [In-Person Only]
$13 General Admission
$10 Student/Child/Senior
$7 Member
⚠️ Public safety notice ⚠️
NWFF patrons will be required to wear masks that cover both nose and mouth while in the building. Disposable masks are available at the door for those who need them. To be admitted, patrons ages 5+ will also be required to present either proof of COVID-19 vaccination OR a negative result from a COVID-19 test administered within the last 48 hours.
NWFF is adapting to evolving recommendations to protect the public from COVID-19. Read more about their policies regarding cleaning, masks, and capacity limitations here.
Visiting Artist
** Director Anthony Banua-Simon will attend the 8:30pm screening on Saturday, June 4th, to give a Q&A! **
About
(Anthony Banua-Simon, US, 2021, 90 min, in English & Hawaiian with English subtitles)
** Co-presented with Seattle Asian American Film Festival, Left Bank Books, and The Vera Project! **
The Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi is seen as a paradise of leisure and pristine natural beauty, but these escapist fantasies obscure the colonial displacement, hyper-exploitation of workers and destructive environmental extraction that have actually shaped life on the island for the last 250 years. Cane Fire critically examines the island’s history — and the various strategies by which Hollywood has represented it—through four generations of director Anthony Banua-Simon’s family, who first immigrated to Kauaʻi from the Philippines to work on the sugar plantations. Assembled from a diverse array of sources—from Banua-Simon’s observational footage, to amateur YouTube travelogues, to epic Hollywood dance sequences — Cane Fire offers a kaleidoscopic portrait of the economic and cultural forces that have cast Indigenous and working-class residents as “extras” in their own story.
Synopsis and stills courtesy of The Cinema Guild. Click here for full photo credits.
“A Los Angeles Plays Itself as told by the Hawaiian uncle you never had … Cane Fire represents the experimental side of cinema in Hawai’i, in its most radical yet personal form.” – Jason Sanders, Filmmaker Magazine
“With every narrative building block to support his thesis, Banua-Simon exposes the colonialist mindset of white mainlanders and foreigners that passes off displacement as progress.” – Carlos Aguilar, The Wrap
“Through original and deftly assembled archival footage, Anthony Banua-Simon’s debut documentary feature Cane Fire considers the long arc of white, corporate economic & cultural pillaging of Hawaii.” – Patrick Dahl, Screen Slate
“A necessary corrective to the perception of Hawaiian identity that diagnoses the problem of representation in pop culture through the filmmaker’s own deeply personal lens.” – Eric Kohn, Indiewire
“Cane Fire uncovers not one, but several underreported histories at the same time with equal parts reverence, relevance, and rage.” – Andrew Parker, The Gate
