Boy w/ Alika Maikau
“I had never seen a story that was so authentic to a place without being didactic or over-explaining the context. The film is asking you to come to it.” —Alika Maikau
Alika Maikau
Aditya is joined by filmmaker Alika Maikau to chat about life in Hawai’i, the tightness of the Maori and Polynesian film communities, and Taika Waititi’s 2010 instant classic, Boy.
Alika is a multi-hyphenate filmmaker based out of Honolulu, Hawai’i. In 2017 he was nominated for Best Made In Hawai’i Short at the Hawai’i International Film Festival for Keep You Float, which led to an invitation to the ‘Ohina Filmmakers Lab where his next script earned him a mentorship under Joe Robert Cole (Black Panther). Cole oversaw the development of what would become his next short, Mauka To Makai, which premiered at the end of 2018 and was awarded Best Made In Hawai’i Short at the Hawai’i International Film Festival. Filmmaker Magazine published an article in 2019 entitled “Made Visible,” where they went on to say about the short film: “Bringing to the screen a world little seen even in Hawaiian films, it wove a universal tale of economic struggle and longtime friendship into a proudly local, indigenous setting.”
You can find Alika on Instagram. Watch the trailer for Boy here.