DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT
LUCAS MANUEL-SCHEIBE
This film springs from a history of charting disappearance. Returning to Kohala every year to see my family, I found that my grandmother and the other elders of the community had a web of stories to share of their life and times in Hawai‘i.
With my mother, I created an ethnographic documentary called “This is Kohala” for the Kohala Oral History Project, which aired on PBS Hawai’i on March 28th. KOHP also now partners with the local high school to teach a new generation of documentary filmmakers to capture these stories within an environment and culture worth sharing.
My mother made the choice to leave Hawai‘i Island; my uncle stayed. With each graduating class, Hawaiians are asked whether they should stay or go.
KEALOHA DISAPPEARS charts themes of uprooting and diaspora, which are emboldened in Hawai‘i by climate change and post-colonialism.
Kealoha’s disappearance mirrors the vanishing of many islanders and the land they come from. -LMS
