As the first surf event in Olympic history takes off in Japan, with island-born world champions Carissa Moore and John John Florence headlining the U.S. team, a short film commemorating Hawaii’s Duke Paoa Kahanamoku, the world-renowned surfer and winner of three gold and two silver Olympic medals for swimming, debuts Wednesday in Doris Duke Theatre’s free, online Honolulu Surf Film Festival.
While Kahanamoku’s name has been much invoked in the run-up to the Tokyo Summer Games, the animated “Moho (Champion),” takes a different perspective, in which a young Hawaiian surfer named ‘Apo wonders, “If Duke was to be here, what would he think?” said Cliff Kapono, the film’s writer/director.
The idea grew out of the International Olympics Committee’s ruling that Florence and Moore must surf under the U.S. flag, rather than the Hawaiian flag, said “Moho” producer Daniel Ikaika Ito.
Meanwhile, “people were talking about Paoa so nonchalantly, as if entitled to speak on his behalf,” Kapono said. “It seemed like his identity was passed on through a lot of different hands, but the only one who knew who Duke was, was Duke.”
As a Native Hawaiian with a doctorate in chemistry, Kapono said he himself had experienced “having to personify an identity that’s compatible for the outside world, in those spaces where it’s not acceptable to be different.”
The character of ‘Apo considers how Kahanamoku had overcome adversities such as the illegal overthrow of Queen Lili‘uokalani when he was 3 years old, growing up in an Americanized Hawaii, and enduring racism as he traveled the United States.
He reflects that such disruptions in a young person’s life “don’t necessarily define a person any more than being an Olympic medalist or ambassador of aloha,” Kapono said.
“Moho,” five minutes long, with art direction by Michael Ceballos, and cultural and educational advice from Isaiah K. Walker and Joseph Sanchez, will stream live at 6 p.m. Wednesday, followed by a panel discussion, at honolulumuseum.org/events/summer-of-shorts.
