Filmmaker rises to occasion as he juggles multiple tasks

Chris Kahunahana’s alarm goes off when most people are fast asleep — 3 a.m. — but the Kaimuki filmmaker says that’s his most creative time of the day.

"It seems to be the only time that my mind is free to wander and create things," he said. "After the day starts it’s hard to focus."

Given his ambitious summer plans, he needs to stick with whatever works best, regardless of the hour.

As one of four filmmakers selected last month for the Sundance Institute’s NativeLab Fellowship, Kahunahana is in the midst of rewriting the screenplay that got him selected, "Karaoke Kings." The mentors in the program want him to finish by September so he can submit it to the Sundance screenwriters lab.

But he’s also directing a short film called "Lahaina Noon" which he hopes will be accepted by the Sundance Film Festival. And the deadline is — you guessed it — in September. Kahunahana has spent the past few weeks working on preproduction for the film and was scheduled to start principal photography this weekend.

"It’s kind of crazy," he said.

Downtown bar hoppers are familiar with Kahunahana from his days (nights, actually) as one of the owners of the Hotel Street nightclub Nextdoor. After eight years there he sold the place in 2013 to pursue filmmaking full time.

He drew from his Chinatown experiences to create "Karaoke Kings." He watched the homeless population grow and got to know some of the people forced to live on the streets.

The film follows a suicidal, homeless Hawaiian singer who is struggling to survive on the streets of Chinatown long enough to compete in a singing contest called "Karaoke Kings." It may be his only shot at fame, redemption and love.

"The characters were real to me," Kahunahana said. "When I sat down to write it, the characters came easy to me. I wrote it in three weeks."

NATIVELAB is a two-stage development program for Native American, Native Hawaiian and Native Alaskan filmmakers. This year’s participants were sent to a four-day workshop last month on the homelands of the Mescalero Apache Tribe in New Mexico. In January they will be flown to the Sundance Film Festival to meet industry professionals and talk about their projects. Along the way they will receive feedback on their work.

Feedback is critical, said Kahunahana, a visual person learning to work with words.

Although he’s 43, Kahunahana said he’s "a young filmmaker." He has more experience with the nightclub scene and as founder of the Hono­lulu Underground Film Festival and the Cinema Paradise Island Independent Film Festival. For several years Nextdoor was also the host venue for the Showdown in Chinatown film contest.

"What I find is that sometimes the things that you write, when people read it, aren’t the things that you actually think you’re saying," he said. "And it’s hard sometimes to get a critical reflection on your work from your peers because they all support you no matter what."

He has folders full of ideas, characters, snippets of dialogue he created and plot moments he can incorporate into whatever story arc he’s pursuing. He writes them longhand, on a yellow pad and then onto notecards he can organize and reorganize until a scene makes sense.

All this in the middle of the night, at an hour that once found him coming home from work. All this with a deadline every day: morning.

AND that’s a wrap …

Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.