Watch Aikāne - a Universal Queer Love Story Rooted In Native Hawaiian Tradition

The short film follows two queer lovers — a warrior and his shape-shifting advisor — as they battle colonial evil.

by Quispe Lopez - Them - November 15, 2023

Filmmakers Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson were exploring the rocky underwater coast of O‘ahu when the idea for Aikāne, their award-winning queer short film, was born. As the married couple floated around each other in the dreamlike blue haze, they realized they wanted to set a story about queer love and intimacy in a similarly whimsical underwater realm.

“We just felt so connected and I felt just in that moment, that’s the story we should tell,” Hamer told Them. “It’s a story about connection and this is the place where we want to set the story.”

The result was Aikāne, a short animated film about a supernatural queer romance, which you can now stream here on Them. While the idea originated with Hamer and Wilson’s scuba dive, a small creative team helped bring it to life, including animator Daniel Sousa, who served as assistant director, and filmmaker Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, a Kānaka Maoli activist who produced the project. Aikāne showcases the tale of two queer lovers — a valiant warrior and his trusted shape-shifting advisor — as they battle against looming colonial forces.This isn’t the first time the creative quartet has made a film that conveys Indigenous queer power. Under the guidance of Wong-Kalu, a prominent kumu (teacher) of culture and spirituality in the Native Hawaiian tradition, the same team created the critically acclaimed 2020 short Kapaemāhū, which retold a 700-year-old mo‘olelo (story) about a group of four māhū, the Hawaiian term for a healer who contains the duality of both a male and female spirit.

While Kapaemāhū spotlights Native Hawaiian queer mythology, Aikāne draws broad inspiration from a slew of LGBTQ+ legends and cultures from across the world, including the Celtic tradition, imagery from the Isle of Man, and ancient Greek myths. Ultimately, though, the story was born and crafted in Hawai‘i, and it shows.

“It didn't have to be Hawaiian, but here's the soil,” Wong-Kalu told Them. “The sand and sea of Hawai‘i is what helped to put [the story] out there like this. That’s how it takes on Aikāne.”

In Kānaka Maoli tradition, the culture of the Indigenous people of Hawai‘i, the term “aikāne” refers to an intimate relationship between two people of the same gender. In pre-colonial times, it was often Native Hawaiian royalty and leadership who had these kinds of close confidantes. Wong-Kalu says she suggested the film be titled Aikāne after watching one of the final versions and being reminded of the tale of Kanaloa and Kāne, a Native Hawaiian mo‘olelo of an intimate relationship between the god of the deep sea and the god of creation.

“It is a universal story, but with a Hawaiian splash, because this is where it grew and Dean and Joe found themselves here,” Wong-Kalu adds.

As the film emerges festival season with awards from the New Hampshire Film Festival, the Hawaiian International Film Festival, and more, its creators are hoping Aikāne can reach a global audience with its message of positivity and queer love.

Below, read our conversation with Hamer, Sousa, Wilson, and Wong-Kalu speak about the significance of Aikāne, the process of putting the story together, and how they hope it will affect audiences.

Can you tell me a little bit about how the project really started?

Dean Hamer: Joe and I had been working on [it] for more than 20 years, even though we didn't know it. We've spent all our time together since we got married working on making documentaries and helping to tell stories of queer people and mostly of the injustices and the wrongs and the challenges that we face and the perseverance that's required to survive.

We were working on getting Kapaemāhū out into the world and it was getting a lot of attention and traction and interest. And then we started hearing all of this horrible anti-gay, anti-queer rhetoric: “Don't Say Gay” in schools, and you can't give your kid healthcare, or [you have to] ban that book.

We felt it was time to tell a different type of story. Instead of talking about all of the struggle and the conflict of queerness, [we wanted to] talk a little bit about the benefits. During all of our work together, what has always held us together, despite all the conflict that we've witnessed and been involved in, is our love for one another and our trust of one another and our relationship.

In the beginning of the film, the term “aikāne” is defined, but I'd love for you to expand on its significance, meaning, and depth.

Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu: It has gone through its own challenges to survive and to be understood. But my interpretation of “aikāne” is an intimate friend of the same sex. This relationship was not necessarily based on sexual intimacy, but just life intimacy, physical connection, sharing of duty and responsibility, sharing of space, sharing of time, sharing of obligation to family and community. An aikāne is someone who you can trust and someone who you can rely on, count on and lean on in your daily life.

In traditional, pre-Western contact times, those relationships were quite common. Chiefly folk were especially noted to have intimate friends of the same sex within their retinue, within their midst, because they needed their close confidantes. They needed people who they could trust with their life, and they also needed support if they were not able to tend to an important matter. If their aikāne went on their behalf, it was sanctioned and accepted. That changed with Christianity. Christianity made relationships like that go the other way and be negative. So I come from a culture that only knows one pronoun, he, she, and it is only one word, and that is ʻo ia. 'O ia is an indicator of how my people feel about sex and gender.

Walk me through the process of putting the film together, from concept to the final product that we see before us.

Daniel Sousa: I was really amazed that we could tackle an original fictional story that was epic and had monsters and mythology and a love story, [and somehow] juggle all these pieces together. These characters did not speak and had to communicate through pantomime, almost like shadow puppet theater, which I thought was fascinating, too. We arrived at something that we were all happy with.

Then it was a matter of starting with some designs, trying to do some world building, looking at the color palette of this world, looking at a lot of references of the underwater world as well as the landscapes in Hawai‘i and other places as well. We looked at the rock formations in Ireland and the Isle of Man, for instance. We also looked at different art forms and Celtic patterns for tattoos. Gradually, we created this visual language. For me, I had a lot of catching up to do because I live in Rhode Island — not Hawai‘i — so I was not acquainted with the richness of this world [and], the coral reefs. I'm not a diver, either, like Dean and Joe are. We looked at the strange and hypnotic movements of octopuses and how they can transform and move through spaces and crawl through just about any environment you could think of.

I'd love to hear more about what went into the story-crafting and where the mythology is being pulled from.

DH: We told [Hinaleimoana] that we didn't really see any known Kānaka story that exactly fit this sort of arc that we were looking for. She was very clear that we should be careful not to pretend it was a Hawaiian story or even any other Polynesian story, because there were no Samoan stories or Tongan stories or Māori stories that we knew of that fit either. So we were careful to do that, and we got rid of anything in the dress or the tattoos and the landscapes even, that would make it specifically Hawaiian. Then we showed pretty much the finished film, or very close to the finished film, to Hina.

HW: We are a collaborative unit, but we’re also our own independent storytellers. So when this opportunity came up, I said [I would] pull myself back and just watch. I want[ed] to see the story that they came up with. I had no idea about the elements of the octopus, the elements of this healing water. I didn't tell them, but I'll reveal it to you all now, that Kāne and Kanaloa are two of the most legendary of the deities of traditional Hawai‘i. Kāne is god of freshwater, Kanaloa is god of the deep sea.

I saw that and I said, “Oh, amazing.” Because of that element, even though it's not intended to be set in Hawai‘i, there were enough elements there that had at least some resonance for me. When the title of the film was being put out to the table, the original title of the film was a different title, and it ran with that title for a short while. Then we pulled ourselves back to the table, and I looked at it again. With anything that any of us could work on, we have to simmer over it, we have to digest it, and we have to let it mature on its own. It's sort of like opening a bottle of wine and just letting it breathe for a little while.

But I said, “Gosh, there's no other way for me to speak to the basic element of the story [besides] aikāne.” Regardless of what the setting is, regardless of these silent underpinnings that bring very Hawaiian elements, there are still other elements that have been left to the vivid imagination that Daniel masterfully puts out there, and blows us away with the beauty of the story. And so Aikāne was the only logical title to call it, because that's the relationship.

Joe Wilson: What was unique in what we learned through our work here in Hawai‘i and with Hina in particular is there aren't a lot of societies or languages that have named in respectful ways these kinds of relationships or love. Since Hawai‘i is our home and all that comes with it, we carry a responsibility to help lift it. This project gave us an opportunity to do that, even though it's not just a Hawaiian story. We're proud of that.

I often find that queer love stories in general are portrayed pretty tragically. But what I love about the ending of Aikāne is the fact that we have our protagonists being successful against this evil, opposing force, and they get to enjoy their love afterwards. I'd love to know about the significance of that.

DH: Although there are plenty of gay love stories, they're always about the fight of the two people against homophobia, against outside forces that are against them. And about that struggle. We know that's a lot of life, but since we had the freedom of fiction, we just wanted to imagine what would happen in a world where there was none of that. And where them being two men doesn't really make any difference. We made this movie because we think that telling a queer love story with a happy ending is a form of resistance.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.