Super 8

Dream Sequences is the result of the first test run of my Canon Zoom 518 Super 8 film movie camera, as well as a slideshow of my most recently developed roll of 35mm Tri-X shot on my Canon AE-1 Program. It is titled as such because my process of deciphering its story was done through my subjective interpretation of the symbols it provided—much as one would do to decipher the meaning behind a dream.

When you take the time to do a little soul searching in nature, you find out a lot about what it means to be human. That’s the message of the dream, I think.

When I first moved to Hawaiʻi Island, I had two goals: to build a connection with the land and to build a connection with my ancestors. What I didn’t know was that these two goals would end up being one and the same.

The film opens with Alice Coltrane’s “Wisdom Eye,” setting up a dreamy atmosphere for the dreamers to travel through. The dreamers sit beside the shore, staring out at the wide-open sea, sensing that there’s something important they’ve forgotten—remembering something deeper within.

Music plays, and the birds and wind whisper: there is really only one place to go when one is ready to look within.

Up. Up the mountain they go.

And the search begins.

Searching, searching, searching… a māmane woodland for the wisdom withheld from the valley’s people below. Here, the birds have seen it all. To see them sing is to remember—to be transformed into a flower, then a butterfly.

But the wao akua is no place for the dreamers to linger long.

Deep remembrance. The lesson learned.

Re-membering—the dreamers, part of the whole.

Down to the town the dreamers go, to parade their revelations.

Aloha ʻāina. Aloha kākou.

Marty Robbins’ voice enters the dreamʻs soundtrack to ask: Will she remember me? Will she forget? An age-old question as time has its way with us.

How does one remember? And what exactly is it we’re trying to remember again?

The film asks this now that the dreamers have returned home again.

Home, again.

The still frames respond, taking the dreamers from the city, back to the water, then back to the mountain.

We come from the earth. This is our home.

And if you look around—really look—you’ll see: it’s not just a place for the living. The dead are all around us.

And in the forest, the dead stand tall and beautiful.

And that’s what’s important. That’s what the dreamers must remember: to honor the dead and give them their place.

Because one day you’ll be sitting on a tennis court, petting a good dog, and the dream sequence will end.

And the only way for it to continue is for the dreamers to remember.

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For my grandfather, Kiyoshi Hamakawa.

“Beyond the Reef” was one of his favorite songs. It became one of mine because of him. We sang it together many times, and even in the last months of his life, when he was forgetting the words to other songs he had known for years, this one, he remembered.
One of my last memories of him is singing it in a very weak, fading voice. When he lost his place, my grandmother would remind him of the words, and he would continue.

Will she remember me? Will she forget?

He remembered until the end.

Dreamers keep on dreaming.