California Update (#1)

After three days on the road, we made it safely to Quincy, CA, where the weather is GORGEOUS... (man, I do miss the California sunshine!) We're going to soak up some sunshine, have a visit with my family, and then hit the road again on Sunday.

Ben Servino has found us a venue for the fundraiser screening, which will be held on Wednesday, May 13, 6-8pm, at the Cal State Hayward campus, Old University Union, Rm. #102. 

Gus Kaipat, who will be in California helping me with the film's score, has graciously agreed to perform before the screening. (Thanks, Gus!)

 

Driving directions to the CSUEB campus are here.

 

Here is the link for the campus map.

And here is the facebook page for the event.

And lastly, after much discussion and consultation (and many thanks to all of you who participated in my surveys)... I've decided to stick with the original title of The Insular Empire: America in the Marianas. No, it's not perfect -- but it seems to be closer to perfect than anything else we were all able to come up with!

 

California, Here I Come...

We're packing up and getting ready to head south! After almost 8 years of planning, shooting, editing (and re-editing and re-editing), we are LOCKING PICTURE on Monday, putting the files on my laptop, and driving it down to California. Yeeha!

A zillion details still to sort out, but the film at least is finally solid, and I'm feeling really good about it. I showed it to my TV-director friend Mona last week and she said, "wow, it's really good... and definitely one of the best docs I've seen made by someone I know!" (Since she went to USC film school and worked in LA for years, this does actually mean something.) 

We're driving down to SF in Nik's trusty VW Westphalia, aka Verne the Van, and stopping along the way to visit family in Seattle and in Quincy, CA. We'll be in the Bay Area by next Monday, where I'm going to be working with Todd Boekelheide (Academy-award winning sound designer and composer) and Gus Kaipat (recording artist and ukulele player from Saipan) on the film's musical score. With the help of Martha Duenas and Hopie Cristobal I'm also going to be setting up a still photo shoot, to get photos of Chamorro faces for my animator Kunal Sen to use in the animations... AND it looks like Ben Servino of Cal State East Bay is going to set up a fundraising screening for Wednesday, May 13th at the Hayward Campus. (So if any of you want a sneak peek at the film, and want to help get this thing DONE and on the air, come on out and show your love!) I will post more details on the screening once he's nailed down a time and venue.

It should be a very full and very productive week, and I'm really looking forward to it. But now... back to the grindstone. Lots to do before we leave...

One time in Madrid...

We spent many, many hours with Carlos Taitano -- but this is still one of my favorite Carlos moments:

Money, money, money

It seems that the closer I get to the finish line with this documentary, the more financial hurdles get thrown in my path. Who knew it would cost $2500 for 25 seconds of archival footage from Japan? And $3000 just for a lawyer to help me get E&O insurance? (Not to mention the $5000 for the insurance itself?)

Undaunted, I am soldiering on... but a small voice in the back of my head (along with the clearly audible voice of my husband) keeps asking, "Hey, how are you going to pay for all that?"

What I am saying, dear reader, is that we are not yet out of the woods. We need money to finish this film. So if you have even $5 or $10 to spare -- please donate. If you have more, so much the better (here at Horse Opera we are experts at stretching pennies, so even small donations can go a long way). 

Other ways you can help:

• If you know of a funding source we should apply to, please let me know. 
• Throw a fundraising party! It's fun, it'll make you really popular, AND it will help us out. Send me an email and I'll send you a DVD screener w/ info on how to collect donations. It's that easy!
• Tell other people about the film and show them how to donate. Hey, it's tax deductible! It's good for the economy! It's good for the planet! And it's easy. 

Donating is good for your karma and will make you feel good all day. Plus helping us to finish this film will be really, really good for the people of the Marianas, who have been getting the shaft for a very, very long time.

Thank you for reading this, and for your support.

Adios, Tun Carlos

It is with real sorrow that I am blogging today about the passing of Carlos Pangelinan Taitano, who died last week at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 92. The Guam Pacific Daily News published this obituary for him -- but they've left off many details from his long and illustrious life. 

Many people don't know, for instance, that Carlos was a professional dancer during his high school and college years in Hawaii, or that he was one of the first Chamorros to receive a college degree (in, I believe, 1940 -- though that might be off by a year). He was one of the first (if not the first) Chamorros to become an attorney, and that distinction opened many doors for him back on Guam -- including becoming the official bottler for Coca-Cola throughout Micronesia. Carlos served as a legislator in the Guam Congress (in which he eventually served as Speaker of the House), and he led the congress in the now-famous Walkout of 1949, which led to the Organic Act of Guam. 

Later in life, Carlos returned to his passion for dance by researching the historic dances of Guam's original Tao Tao Tano people, reconstructing cultural practices that had been all but erased by five hundred years of colonization. This research forms the foundation of many of the dances now performed by Guam's Chamorro cultural organizations, such  as Pa'a Tao Tao Tano. Right up until his death, Carlos remained active -- speaking publicly about the need for change on Guam, and continuing his research on Chamorro and Austranesian culture and history.

I was lucky enough to have seen Carlos only three weeks before he died, while I was in Los Angeles for the preview screening of The Insular Empire. While he was too weak by that point to attend the screening, I am pleased to say that I was able to show the film to him in his hospital room, and that he seemed quite pleased with the way it portrayed him. I'm also pleased to report that -- even in the hospital, as weak as he was -- he seemed happy and alert, and not in any pain. He even asked for a pen and paper, so that he could take notes while watching!

The Insular Empire would not be the film it is with Carlos' support and participation. He was unfailingly generous with his time, and allowed us to interview him (twice, at length) as well as giving us complete access to his extensive personal archives. He was also gracious about letting us follow him around with a camera, on occasions too numerous to mention. His family, too, was open and helpful, and we owe them a debt of gratitude as well.

We are culling some of Carlos' finer interview segments from the many hours of footage we collected, and this weekend I will post some of that footage here. For now, I offer up my sincere condolences to his family, and a short prayer for Tun Carlos – may his spirit go in peace.

Okinawa

Hope Cristobal (Sr.) forwarded me an op-ed article today from the Japan Times, by Kiroku Hanai. The article outlines the current debate raging in Japan about the proposed base realignment which would result in relocating US marines, their families, and support personnel to Guam. 

Most of the local folks on Guam are pretty pissed off about this plan -- not having been involved in it, or asked their opinion about it, despite the fact that the buildup would severely and adversely impact their already over-burdened island. But it appears that the local folks on Okinawa are also pissed off. I met with a contingent from Okinawa at the Security Without Empire conference last month, and after watching The Insular Empire they came up and told me how similar the Marianas story was to their own... because evidently the planned military move doesn't actually remove the US military from Okinawa -- it merely moves one US base from one location (Futenma) to another (Nago) -- AS WELL as moving the marines to Guam. The proposed Nago site is also something of an environmental disaster: it would fill in almost 2 square kilometres of ocean, including habitat of the endangered 'dugong' sea mammal. (Think baby beluga meets manatee.) And the Japanese taxpayers are supposed to be footing 60% of the bill for all of this. 

Well, I can hear you all saying, isn't the New Age of Obama going to change all this? I would have liked to think so, but in fact Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton's first official overseas visit was to Japan, where -- as the Japan Times article points out -- she did her best to push through plans for the move, despite growing protest from Japan. (And Guam. And Okinawa. The Okinawans, in fact, have been holding a daily sit-in at the proposed Henoko site since 1997. That's twelve years. Every day. They even go out in kayaks and do sit-ins on the tower construction sites off-shore. They *really* don't want that base there.)

Kiroku Hanai writes: "Clinton's visit to Japan and the execution of the Guam transfer agreement can only be interpreted as an attempt by Washington to secure its vested rights to maintain military bases in Japan. If so, it will undoubtedly come as a big disappointment to those Japanese citizens of sound judgment who earnestly hoped that President Obama would depart from the belligerent policies of his predecessor."

Indeed. 

PEER goes after Air Force for Guam Environmental Crimes

A recent post on Commondreams.org reported on serious environmental infractions on Guam by the US Air Force. PEER -- Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility -- issued a "whistleblower disclosure" on the part of Nancy Mitton, Natural Resources Specialist at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base. Ms. Mitton has evidently been trying, for years, to draw attention to problems caused, or permitted, by the Air Force. Problems like rampant poaching, lack of protection of endangered species, paving beaches, and stripping vegetation from the habitats of nesting turtles. She finally gave up going through regular channels and took her grievances public.

I'm not in the least surprised that any of this is going on (her most common allegation is of 'abuse of authority'). But it struck me in reading her announcement that it is GREAT that Commondreams is paying attention to Guam's environment. 

Now how do we get them to start paying attention to Guam's people?

This isn't an entirely facetious question. For while Ms. Mitton's exclusive focus on the environment could -- from a local, Chamorro perspective -- be infuriating (she makes no distinction between the local 'poacher', who is probably hunting on his family's ancestral lands, and the Air Force officer who is blythely paving beaches), it also offers the opportunity for some much-needed publicity, and maybe even some useful coalition-building.

Here's the current situation: the military holds most of the power, the Chamorus have almost no international recognition, and their environment is in dire straits. Given this sorry state of affairs, my personal feeling is that it would be politically astute for local people to jump on the environmental bandwagon. Yes, the environmental protection laws are made by people who know nothing about Chamoru custom or culture. Yes, the people enforcing those laws are usually just as ignorant. But protecting the environment serves everyone's long-term interests -- especially the Chamorus', because when the military is long gone, the Chamorus will still be there. And if there aren't any turtle or fruitbats or coconut crabs left, it's going to hurt them more than anyone. 

So, as an interim first step, I think it would be smart for Chamoru Nasion et al to build a coalition with the environmental folks. What they lack in cultural understanding (and probably in understanding of the Treaty of Paris and other relevant political facts), they make up for in U.S. government clout AND scientific knowledge related to species survival. (And hey, the EPA is finally getting some teeth again under the new administration! Woohoo!) Plus, if the locals work WITH the environmentalists, and help them, it's an opportunity to educate them, and maybe even to get them on board to help further the cause of Chamoru self-determination. You never know. It sure beats having your beaches paved.