Among the festival’s “Made in Hawai’i” shorts, several stood out, with the virtual streaming process enabling audiences to pick and choose a film at a time, if needed, and to find their own way through the program. Richly animated in golds and rusts by Daniel Sousa in a manner reminiscent of Michel Ocelot’s Kirikou and the Sorceress, Kapaemahu (Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, Dean Hamer, Joe Wilson) retells the ancient origin story of four fabled stones in Waikiki, created to honor four “dual male and female spirit” healers from Tahiti who brought the healing arts to Hawai’i. Its post-film Zoom Q&A was particularly rewarding, with a welcoming hula performed by an Oakland-based collective and several insights from the creative team. “I am Kanaka — a native person in an island nation that was illegally overthrown and continues to be occupied by a foreign power,” notes Wong-Kalu in the film’s press kit. “Our survival as indigenous people depends on our ability to know and practice our cultural traditions, to speak and understand our language, and to feel an authentic connection to our own history. That is why I wanted to make a film about Kapaemahu, and to write and narrate it in Olelo Niihau – the only form of Hawaiian that has been continuously spoken since prior to the arrival of foreigners. We need to be active participants in telling our own stories in our own way.”