Christian Sorensen Hansen, Hawaii’s Children

November 8, 2015

Hawaii’s Children

Meet the denizens of paradise

“Hawaii is a mother,” says one of the inhabitants depicted in this sweeping portrait from Seattle-born director Christian Sorensen Hansen. Surfers, dancers, hikers, riders: the archipelago’s six islands are a melting pot of cultures and lifestyles, where “Kama’aina” (locals) and newly arrived residents mix.

“Hawaii can be a mystery to mainlanders,” says Hansen. “We see a binary portrayal in the media – it’s either a vacationer's surf paradise or a quickly vanishing culture and frontier, crowded with tourists.” Resisting this simple polarity, the film offers what Hansen calls a “mash-up of Hawaii's native and transplant perspectives,” to presents an image of the islands that “resists being defined as a ‘paradise’ or ‘locals only.’”