Friday Maui Film Festival Highlights

The 2019 Maui Film Festival kicks off this week.  There’s  a host of honorees, screenings and special events happening June 12-16, 2019 in Wailea.  Click here for the complete lineup.

In addition to star-studded ceremonies, the schedule is packed with screenings of life-affirming films, inspiring filmmakers, and fabulous events that will highlight the culture, food, and beauty of Maui.  Individual tickets and passes for the festival are on sale now at www.mauifilmfestival.com.

Below are some highlights of what’s happening on Friday, June 14, 2019.

CELESTIAL CINEMA SCREENINGS

Bottom of the 9th:
Friday, June 14, 8 p.m. (Celestial Cinema, Wailea)

The Maui Film Festival’s 2019 Shooting Star Award Honoree Joe Manganiello stars, alongside Sofía Vergara, in this moving redemption drama about a man who returns to the Bronx after serving 18 years in prison for a mistake he made as a kid that ultimately robbed him of a professional baseball career and the love of his life. Friday Night, June 14’s Celestial Cinema screening will be the film’s World Premiere. Mr. Manganiello and Ms. Sofía Vergara will both attend the screening. Produced by: Joe Manganiello. Distributed by: Saban Films. (111 min. PG-13) Preceded by the short film: Is This Love? 

Plus One:
Friday, June 14, 10 p.m. (Celestial Cinema, Wailea)

Winner of the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival Audience for Narrative Feature and starring this year’s Maui Film Festival Rising Star Honoree Maya Erskine, alongside Jack Quaid. Ms. Erskine stars a single woman who forges a pact with her college friend to attend their litany of summer weddings together to look for love. “Sharp, Raunchy and Altogether Winning” raved SLASHFILM and The Hollywood Reporter added “Fresh Spiky. Persuasively Intimate.” Need a few dozen good laughs from a rom-com with a twist? This is it. Directors / Screenwriters: Jeff Chan and Andrew Rhymer. Courtesy: RLJE Films (98 min. PG-13). Preceded by the short film: Certifiable

FRIDAY JUNE 14 CASTLE THEATER, MACC

One:
Friday June 14, 3 p.m. (Castle Theater, Maui Arts & Cultural Center)

Addiction…incarceration…family trauma. We’ve become a culture that enshrines pain, at the same time offering it as entertainment. But how can we go beyond the seductive reality show narrative of shattered lives? How can we find the missing pieces that will allow us to heal and transcend? This powerful visually arresting film explores the elusive bridge between the broken and the unbreakable. Using the words of the great Zen scholar Alan Watts, the filmmakers link hardcore devastation to a powerful awareness of our deeper humanity. ONE is an emotionally visual journey that asks the questions, what do we want? What would satisfy us? What is it that we are really yearning after Directors: Mike Goedecke and Lauren Dubac. (77min. NR)

Gay Chorus Deep South:
Friday, June 14, 5 p.m. (Castle Theater, Maui Arts & Cultural Center)

This Winner of the 2019 Audience Documentary Award at the Tribeca Film Festival that tells the story of over 300 singers traveling from Mississippi to Tennessee through the Carolinas and over the bridge in Selma to share a message of music, love and acceptance to communities and individuals confronting intolerance. Amazingly, it offers a glimpse of a less divided America, where the things that divide us—faith, politics, sexual identity—are set aside by the soaring power of music, humanity and a little drag.” Directed by: David Charles Rodrigues. (100 min. NR)

Becoming Nobody:
Friday, June 14 7:30 p.m. (Castle Theater, Maui Arts & Cultural Center)

This film is the quintessential portal to Ram Dass’ life and teachings. Whether as a rock star Harvard psychologist, counter-culture rascally adventurer, Eastern holy man, stroke survivor or compassionate caregiver, this film captures a loving man full of joy, wit, honesty and wisdom, at ease in conversation while sharing his considerable pains and pleasures whose life experiences have freed him from the attachments of his ‘Somebodyness’ and transformed him into the radiant soul who now inspires a new generation. Directed by: Jamie Catto. Producer: Raghu Markus. (91 min. NR) Preceded by the short film: Lady Hater.

HONOREES:

Joe Manganiello: 2019 Shooting Star Award
Friday, June 14 | 7:30 p.m. (Celestial Cinema, Wailea)
Presented By Sofía Vergara

The Shooting Star Award honors an actor in a Maui Film Festival Hawaii Premiere whose breakthrough performance lights up the Big Screen at Celestial Cinema equally brightly as the Maui moon and stars light up the night. Manganiello’s Shooting Star Award will be presented by, Sofía Vergara, his co-star in “Bottom of the 9th” at the Celestial Cinema prior to the World Premiere of the film. Joe Manganiello is an actor, producer — of “Bottom of the 9th” — director, published author, and Emmy Award-winning narrator. Manganiello was most recently seen battling giant monsters in New Line’s “Rampage” with Dwayne Johnson, and in his debut as super-villain ‘Deathstroke’ during the end credits scene in Warner Brothers/DCEU’s “Justice League.” Manganiello has just completed work on “Shoplifters of the World,” which his production company 359 also produced.

Maya Erskine: 2019 Rising Star Award
Friday, June 14 | 7:30 p.m. (Celestial Cinema, Wailea)

The Rising Star Award honors a young film artist whose every role, even in his or her formative years, surprises, enthralls and delights audiences of every age. In a testament to her immense audience appeal, Maya’s latest film PLUS ONE recently received the Narrative Feature Audience Award at the Tribeca Film Festival. she is also the co-creator/co-star of the critically-acclaimed series PEN15 on HULU. Erskine also plays the lead role in the Red Hour and Studio 71 feature films. Each year the Maui Film Festival scans the constellation of cinema stardom to find talent in the ascendancy of their careers with an exceptional passion and drive to soar. This year, we are thrilled to honor Maya Erskine.