Kai Hali‘a (Sea of Memory)

Kai Hali‘a (Sea of Memory) is a Short Film, Expanded Media Installation, and Live Cinematic Performance directed by Angelique Kalani Axelrode with support from Tiare Ribeaux as Producer.

In the abstract realm of memory, a diasporic Kanaka struggles to connect with their family and lover. By engaging with their moʻokuʻauhau (genealogy) and calling on their kupuna (ancestors) and the ocean, they are able to cope with buried trauma and come back to themselves.

Seeing memory as an intricate ʻupena (net) of both intangible and tangible threads of reality, intertwined with visceral feelings that intimately connect us with our kupuna and the ʻāina (land), the art of remembering brings us back to our core.

Incorporating digital video with 8mm and intentionally damaged 16mm footage, direct film animation and embodied movement, Kai Hali'a offers a bridge and a continuum of the past into the future and the future into the past. The images feel atemporal, constantly shifting and evolving, revealing memory’s dynamic and malleable nature.

Kai Hali‘a screened at the Hawai‘i International Film Festival, Maoriland, LA Asian Pacific Film Festival; was an immersive installation at Aupuni Space (2023), and a live cinematic performance at Create(X) (2023) and the International Symposium of Electronic Arts, Brisbane, Austrailia (2024), among others.