CANE FIRE
Sale Price: $16.99
Price: $Code: 5374
A film by Anthony Banua-Simon
2021, 90 minutes
English Dolby Digital 5.1 & 2.0
Optional English Subtitles
Pre-order: Ships Februalry 11, 2025
Synopsis
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.Special Features
- Audio Commentary track with director Anthony Banua-Simon and producer Mike Vass
- Theatrical Trailer
- Booklet featuring an essay by writer and programmer Emerson Goo
Film Reviews
"An indispensable watch, Banua-Simon’s first feature focuses on the island of Kauaʻi and the history of its exploitation as a colony, which endures under the guise of statehood."
-Carlos Aguilar, The Wrap
"[A] tale as old as America: vicious colonialism, greedy capitalism, rampant racism, and the erasure of local histories for exploitative ends."
-Robert Daniels, RogerEbert.com
"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