HIFF: Land of Eb via Hawaii News Now

(HawaiiNewsNow) – Land of Eb was created by a Big Island Resident and shoot exclusively on Big Island about a Big Island family. It was also seen at the Toronto Film Festival this month. It will be showing at this fall’s Hawaii International Film Festival.

It is the story of a Marshallese family man living in Kona, Hawaii who is diagnosed with stomach cancer. He keeps his illness a secret and resolves to pay off his family’s debts before his death. In the Marshall Islands in 1946, the U.S. military initiated the testing of seventy thermonuclear weapons, rendering the area (in the words of the Atomic Energy Commission) “by far the most contaminated in the world.” Those islanders who were lucky enough to escape sought new, better lives for their families on American soil. But their quiet suffering was far from over, as Andrew Williamson’s The Land of Eb shows us, relating a compassionate portrait of the Marshallese diaspora in Kona, Hawaii from the point of view of a hard-working family man.

With a cast of non-professional actors recruited from the Marshallese community in Kona, The Land of Eb explores the frustrating, day-to-day difficulties of living in a world that doesn’t share your native tongue, culture, or values. Though Jacob is clearly an intelligent man, he continually suffers indignities due to the considerable language barrier. But when he records his family’s history for posterity on one of his video cameras, he speaks eloquently in Marshallese of the mother country they can never go back to, and the dashed dreams of their new home – one that has never welcomed them with open arms.

Continue reading at HIFF: Land of Eb