Hana, the Heart of Hawaii

“Hana, the Heart of Hawaii” Synopsis
Maui is Hawaii’s most popularly visited island. Every year over two million visitors come to Hawaii’s Valley Isle from all over the world. Many of these visitors take the most popular day trip on the island, the scenic drive along the island’s famous Hana Highway to the small, remote town of Hana. Once they get there most visitors have lunch in the town’s restaurant, visit the infamous Hasegawa General Store, briefly tour some of the town’s lovely beaches and parks, and then move on to be poolside at their resort on the other side of the island by sunset. If they elected to stay in Hana for a few days they would begin to see some of the things that are in this film.

Hana is routinely called “one of the last Hawaiian Places” and with good reason. The isolation of being over fifty miles away from the developed part of the island, separated by one of the most narrow and windy ‘highways’ in the entire world has kept this magical, small town intact in ways that few other Hawaiian communities still share. “Hana, the Heart of Hawaii” is an in depth one-hour documentary that portrays life in this tight knit community and pays homage to the Native Hawaiian culture that still thrives here.

All of the fundamental elements of this ancient culture are alive and flourishing in Hana. Hula is practiced regularly in one of the town’s parks. Outrigger canoes paddle in the Hana Bay almost daily. Traditional thatched hales or huts can be seen all over the town, one of them just above the town’s main beach park where the local elders still practice a method of community fishing that has been going on there for over a thousand years. Fully restored Hawaiian fish ponds are teeming with fish and harvested in traditional fashion every three to four years. The largest Heiau, or ancient stone temple, in all of Hawaii still stands just on the outskirts of Hana. Now fully restored and open to the public The Piilani Hale Heiau is a sacred sight no less important than the Pyramids of Giza or the Myan ruins of Tical. Other smaller examples of Hawaiian stone masonry can bee seen all over town in the form of stone walls, all made in traditional fashion by hand with no cement or mortar to hold the stones in place. Taro, the staple plant of the Native Hawaiian diet, is grown throughout the community and the ties that the people here still feel to this key element of their creation stories are strong. The community values its elders as the most precious resource of history and knowledge and its children as the future of the Hawaiian nation. Native Hawaiian is spoken freely here and can be heard in bits of conversations anywhere in town. “Hana, the Heart of Hawaii” manages to catch a bit of the essence of the life here and its importance to all of the Hawaiian Islands in scenes about these main cultural elements, told largely through the words of Hana natives themselves.

Total running time without credits = 52;30
Produced, directed, edited and photographed by Loye Miller
Copyright 2004, Loye Miller Productions Inc.

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