Sitting in a van on the front lines of the protest to protect Mauna Kea, Pua Case, referred to as Aunty Pua in recognition of her role as a leader and an elder in her community, recounted explaining to her daughter, “If we’re separated just get in the van and lock the door and just hide down and don’t ever come out. If your sister and I are arrested, just keep filming.” This is one of the few scenes in Standing Above the Clouds that takes place on the front lines of the protest.

Film director Jalena Keane-Lee and her team wanted to go beyond the superficial depiction of a protest movement to more thoroughly understand the toll this work takes on organizers.

“There is a time—and I think the time is now—where we're all going to be called on to stand for things that we hold sacred and that we hold dear,” Jalena explained to me. “People that are leaders and people that stand for things—they're just like all of us.”

Three matriarchal relationships define the film’s story, which focuses on mother-daughter activists and their quest to protect Mauna Kea, the tallest peak in Hawai’i, from desecration. The familial relationships portrayed between activists and Mauna Kea was intentional.

“Mauna Kea is our actual ancestor,” explains Hāwane Rios, the daughter of Pua Case. ”We are related to this mountain and so we are taught to take care of this place—we take care of our land as we take care of our ohana—our family—as we take care of our elders. Mauna Kea is an elder.”

Aunty Pua and Jalena Keane-Lee spoke with me about their work on this film.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Brendan McInerney: I was wondering if you could talk about the engagement between the director of the film and the people in the film, as well as engagement between generations.

Aunty Pua: In general, you have to take the lead on how it's going to look, because you are going to be accountable for every scene, even one small mistake. I don't know how long we edited, but I would say at least over a year, every week, at the end going, ‘Okay, what about this? Are you happy about this?’

We have a relationship where we were able to be honest. I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I understood the process. I understood the ownership they had over this film.

There's a level of trust and care that has to be a part of the equation. It's one thing to make a film, take the film around, show the film, and be done with those who are being featured in the film but we know from personal experience that whatever is put on the screen is a depiction of very personal stories. It would need our total participation, commitment and dedication before, during and long after the completion of the film. Whatever you put out there is going to impact us forever and the generations after us. It's a live-on-forever process, it's more important and significant than you think.

What we realized early on was that our filmmaking team including director and producers were fully dedicating themselves to being an integral part of every component of the film, beyond filming, editing and producing a final product. They had become a part of the story—our story was their story and that was at the center of every decision we made as we moved forward together.

I'm hoping that if youʻre a filmmaker, you want to be a part of that which you have encapsulated into a story; that you want to be a part of that motion forward to make an impact in the best way possible, and that you want to sincerely support and assist in whatever the purpose is. It's a mindset that filmmakers need a little training on because itʻs complex when it's cultural, when it's spiritual, when it's Indigenous, when it's a movement that will shape our future but it's very beautiful when you have a relationship that allows for real, genuine discussion, give and take, tears and laughter. It's a process. It's deeply emotional and beautiful when it can happen in that way.

As we always said to the filmmakers, "This is your film, this is our life." In the end, the film belonged to all of us. The film had found itʻs way into our hearts and the ownership of it was shared between everyone involved in the project.

For us—the mothers and daughters—we hope that the impact of the true life experiences we choose to share are, in the end, positive and powerful. We hope that we have actually contributed in a meaningful way for what it is we are all standing to protect: our mountain, our homeland, our traditions and our lifeways.

Aunty Pua went on to explain that not only was it important for there to be collaboration in the filmmaking process because of the reputation of the activists. This interrelatedness of all things is an important part of their lives that could not be separated from the filmmaking process.

AP: In the film, there is no separation between anything we do and everything going on with the Mauna. So whether it's politics, whether it's ceremony, whether it's spirituality, whether it's projects we're working on, they are all intertwined together.

The film is allowing us to remain present. It's a teaching tool. We are able to instruct, present, gather, and make alliances all around this film. We have other projects as well. We have music, we have art, we have exhibits, we have the film. Then on the other hand, we're in court, we're presenting to councils, we're attending community meetings and testifying in front of boards. And at the core of everything we do is our ceremony—values, chants, dances and life ways that hold us all together. All of that is what the film is about. It tells a story about three women who are involved in all of it. So everything is intertwined. Everything is connected, and everything surrounds the mountain because the mountain is a symbol for us of how strong we can be when we need to be and how much we need to do to ensure that Hawai’i remains Hawai’i and that we don't lose any more of it than we already have.

From the beginning of this project, Jalena Keane-Lee and her team were very intentional about the way they engaged with this community of activists. Their process, and input from Aunty Pua, informed the creation of the Documentary Accountability Working Group’s filmmaking framework.

Jalena Keane-Lee: It was a commitment from the very beginning that if there was going to be a choice between, ‘what would make a better film’ or, ‘what would be better for the movement or the people in the film,’ it would be no question for us.

[Video Consortium] had an interview with the Documentary Accountability Working Group—we were in some of their early sessions to help them form that framework. Some of our consulting producers and mentors are also a part of that.

Aunty Pua’s quote, ‘It's your film, but it's our life’ is prominent in their framework as well. So we know we're not the only ones that are thinking about these things. We hope that this can kind of bring about a new way of understanding what film can do, [when] it's truly rooted in community and collaboration.”

BMcI: What advice would you have for filmmakers who are trying to resist the kind of pressure that the documentary film industry puts on people to produce things quickly and to kind of ignore some of these more intentional considerations?

JKL: At the end of the day, the festival circuit is going to go on next year and you're the one that will need to live with your film forever. The people in the film are the ones that will live with this story and this depiction forever. So it's worth it to make sure that it's exactly right.

I think part of the healing work and part of the transformation that this film is all about is trying to be able to embody a vision of the world outside of capitalism, outside of colonial values. Urgency and speed around productivity are huge pillars of colonial capitalism.

Unless of course, there is something about your story where it needs to come out right away. As long as you feel good about the timeline and you're clear with the people in the film about what to expect as much as you can. I think that's what matters. Those relationships will be a lot longer lasting than any sort of industry interest that can pass with the season or shift in the winds.

BMcI: I think talking about the tradition of documentary film, oftentimes when we see activist films it's about these really kinetic events on the street, large movements of people yelling and protesting and taking direct action, which is important. But like you say, it can be very grating on a person and on families and communities. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about healing within the film

JKL: Standing for something is quite challenging and we don't try to make it seem like it's just always perfect and always sunshine and roses, but we also want to show that there's so much beauty in resistance and in being with community or with the Lāhui. So we hope that the film can spread that message and also that we can promote a new style of filmmaking that is very focused on care and that can take a medium of documentary, which—the Rough Cut audience and the Video Consortium audience, I'm sure, know a lot about—was founded on ideas of exploitation and extraction, and transform it into something that can be participatory and community based and a healing art form.

AP: We didn't want to give anyone PTSD by showing too much of our experience. So it was very carefully crafted. Before we edited it down to where it is now, I watched the film and I got sick all over again because it was too much for me. And thankfully we have a relationship where I could say, ‘You guys, we have to take some of this out. If I'm getting sick again, so will others watching the film who have gone through all this. And that's not our goal.’ We don't want people walking out of the film reliving something that they'll need therapy over, that we're not going to provide for them.

This thoughtfulness around the film’s participants and future audiences was not just about serving others. When it came time to show the film, Jalena Keane-Lee and her filmmaking team were confident in the work they were showing.

JKL: It wasn't only the people in the film. We also sent the film to many other people for review. Film is a medium of communication. So we had to see how it was landing, both with people that lived on the mountain and were very involved in the movement and people that had never heard of Mauna Kea before.

A few weeks ago [we] did our hometown premiere at the Hawai’i International Film Festival to two completely sold-out screenings. By that time, everyone in the film had seen it multiple times. We all knew that we were feeling good about everything that's in it. We didn’t know exactly how the audience was going to react, but we knew that the leadership of the movement had seen the film. Most of the people with speaking parts had seen the film. So we felt good and knew that we could feel confident in releasing the film and standing by it because of this process that we had together.”

When I first met Aunty Pua through our long-time family friends, the first way that I talked about the project was, ‘Would you be open to something about you and your daughters… that shows the things that people don't get to see? … these in-between times, the preparation, the afterwards, all the things that people don't get to see about what it means to be a protector…?’ And Aunty Pua said yes, she was interested, but that it couldn’t just be about her family. So then we worked together to think about who are the other families that can be shown, who would want to be involved in the project. We came up with this criteria which is that they're ceremonial women, that they stand in the courtroom—they were petitioners in the contested cases, and also that they were on the front lines. Many of them have been arrested on the front line, as well.

I am not native Hawaiian, so it's something that I have extra care and attention to—there's a lot of cultural practices that are very sensitive. This whole story, anything about a movement is very, very sensitive. So I wanted to make sure that people are feeling like themselves and the movement is represented accurately.

That came into how we built our team as well. In addition to myself, we have two producers: Amber Espinosa-Jones and Erin Lau. Erin is Native Hawaiian, I met her on the front line to protect Mauna Kea. She came on to help us with the film. We're a small but mighty team of all women of color, and it's all of our first feature-length film. We're really grateful for everyone who allowed us the space to make this happen.

We're of the generation of Aunty Pua’s daughters and so we really, you know, look up to her. Our understanding of how to make a film has been shaped by the movement and by the principles and standards of the protectors. This is something that I think all of us want to take into future projects—this level of care and collaboration and making sure that people are feeling seen and heard and appreciated.

One of my key values in filmmaking is affirmative consent, which is, not just a buzzword, but a long process and a relationship. It means that just because something is okay one day or in one instance doesn't mean it's going to be okay forever. That also means that just because something was okay to film or we had permission to film doesn't mean the entire thing is going to be in the final cut. One of my mentors said that we were moving at the pace of trust and care, which is obviously not the pace the film industry usually operates at.

BMcI: Currently, we are in the midst of a five-year transition period where the government-recognized lease on the land will be transferred from the University of Hawai’i to the Mauna Kea Stewardship and Oversight Authority (MKSOA). At the end of that five year period, MKSOA will be issuing new land use permits and any observatories that don't get a land-use permit will be decommissioned. What is the plan for the film over those next five years?

JKL: Over the next five years, our number one priority is to protect Mauna Kea and to support the efforts of Mauna Kea Education and Awareness, which is Aunty Pua's grassroots advocacy organization. Part of our campaign is to build the capacity of her organization, which is a small hui of aunties who are working very, very hard around the clock. What you can see in the film and part of the intergenerational healing that we're documenting is her hope to pass onto the next generation, a version of activism that doesn't have to be so 24/7—that can include taking breaks and caring for yourself. Much in credit to the work that Aunty Pua and her generation have done to create these care systems, and then thinking about how the next generation can expand on that and make sure that they're not having to “work themselves to the bone” as Aunty Pua would say. Additionally, one of our goals is to spread the message of the movement throughout the world.

Solidarity amongst other Indigenous communities and amongst communities around the world is a huge part of what has made the movement so successful. So we’d like to continue to use the film to build those connections and build that solidarity. Especially in this time right now, we know that hope is something that is not always in abundance. We hope that our film can provide a vision of what revolutionary hope looks like.

There's a lot of people talking about building new worlds and what that means. But in our film, we hope that you can see and feel what it means to create the world that we want to live in and that you don't have to be a government leader. You don't have to be some official person. You and your community, you and your friends can start to build this world that we want to live in—a world that's rooted in caring and equity and justice. We hope that the film can demonstrate that and inspire people around the world to stand for things in their own community.”

AP: Even this new entity [the MKSOA] is the state-appointed entity designated by the legislature, therefore the governor. So I'm in a wait-and-see pattern. It's very new. Yes, there are Kia’i on this board, but they won't be on the board for longer than a few terms. And when this first group of Kia’i—protectors—that have been very, very involved in the whole stance for Mauna Kea, when their terms are over, the governor—whoever that governor is—will have the right to make the next appointments. So do we trust this new authority? I trust the individuals that are on the board that have come off of that mountain. Beyond that, I‘m very skeptical of what comes out of the governmental decision-making process.

I am a voice of many thousands of us that have no trust in the government. However, should it be pono—should it be run correctly—the transition from University of Hawai’i to that entity hopefully will be successful because they will have the mountain in mind, not science, not development. They will have the mountain and the people in the forefront and whatever that means, hopefully we’ll all have some say in the decision making. Now that's in the perfect world. But again, you can see where I have trepidation here over what comes next.

BMcI: How can readers and viewers contribute to this impact campaign?

JKL: The number one goal is to stop construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope on Mauna Kea. One way that every listener, every reader, every person can get involved is the Change.org petition that's demanding a stop to construction. We're just shy of half a million signatures and we're really wanting to get to that point. Some of the proponents of the telescope have labeled people that are against the telescope as “some Hawaiians and their allies.” This petition is a really important mechanism to show that there are many, many people that don't want this project to be built. So that's a great way to get involved. Protect Mauna Kea on Instagram is a great way to stay involved with the movement, as well as Mauna Kea Education and Awareness, and Standing Above the Clouds on Instagram, Facebook and standingabovetheclouds.com is our website. Those are all ways that you can keep in touch with the project and the movement. Protect Mauna Kea also highlights many of the land rights issues happening across Hawaii too, because this is just one issue but there are many that are happening across Hawaii, across Oceania and across the world, as we know.

Have an idea for Story Power? Send Brendan a note directly! Rough Cut Mag is edited by Monica Gokey.

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