| Filming is now underway for a new movie about a Hawaiian princess and the overthrow of the monarchy.
Filmmakers are recreating the illegal overthrow in 1893, transforming the palace grounds and the Richard Street YWCA into historical sites of more than a century ago.
Barry Pepper plays Thurston and Will Patton is Dole, two wealthy Americans who instigated the overthrow.
Director Marc Forby spent four years researching this project often consulting Hawaiian leaders to insure authenticity. But a small group of protestors objects to one particular scene in the script after the overthrow when the princess urges the Americans to give hawaiians voting rights in the republic they've set up.
"I see it where she's actually acquiescing to American rule by asking for our people to have the right to vote in the American government. The fact is that our Ali'i never did accept or acquiesce to the illegal overthrow. Okay, so what I see is our Ali'i being portrayed like that in the movie," said Reinstated Hawaiian Kingdom Henry Noa.
One of the film's producers said Princess Ka'iulani did petition for voting rights. And the director points to this biography of Ka'iulani, which said that Queen Liliuokalani and the princess both pressed the Americans on that point.
"We believe it happened in the way we're depicting it. It may not have happened that way. The point is it happened and the point is that she was responsible for it. and not that she acquiesced to the overthrow or that she was happy about it in any way, but that she dedicated her short life to her people," said Island Film Group Rick Galindez.Read More... |
