By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
ERA Films of Brussels would shoot its movie
on the life of Father Damien at the settlement where
he served Hawaii's leprosy patients until his death in
1889. A bust of Damien looks over Kalaupapa still.

---

Film on Father Damien
aims for Molokai

A Belgian company could
begin filming on Kalaupapa in May

By Mary Adamski
Star-Bulletin

A feature movie on the life of Father Damien DeVeuster and the plight of 19th-century leprosy patients he served in Kalaupapa will be filmed this summer on the remote peninsula of Molokai.

The project is not the Hollywood venture starring actor Robin Williams that was announced two years ago. It is the production of ERA Films of Brussels, Belgium, Damien's homeland.

Representatives of ERA Films have met with state and National Park Service officials and with some of the Hansen's disease patients who still live in Kalaupapa.

Georgette Deemer, director of the state Film Industry Branch, said production officials are expected to arrive in mid-March. Filming is expected to begin as early as May.

Numerous movies and television shows have been made in Hawaii, but there are unique logistical problems facing this effort because of the location.

Kalaupapa, a 10-mile square peninsula at the foot of 2,000-foot cliffs, is served by four flights per day of small passenger aircraft, occasional cargo flights and an annual barge that carries most of the heavy goods -- construction materials, vehicles, appliances, fuel -- to keep the community going for a year.

The Belgian company is considering bringing in its own barge to haul materials such as the lumber to build sets, said Dean Alexander, National Park Service administrator at Kalaupapa.

An alternative would be cargo helicopter deliveries.

Nothing the film company and the anticipated 40-member crew might require, except cold drinks and snacks and a minimal amount of groceries, could be purchased at the Kalaupapa village, which is home to about 100 people. The only store is operated by the state for the benefit of residents.

Alexander said the National Park Service has not yet issued a permit, one of several that ERA Films will be required to get. "We want to make sure there are no adverse impacts on important natural and cultural resources," he said. "A permit would include conditions of all kinds. It will cover things like removing vegetation, disturbing the ground.

"They will put up facades of a town in Kalawao," site of the original leprosy settlement at the east end of the peninsula.

"We are working to find a suitable place that doesn't impact any archaeological resources or endangered plants."

Alexander said a Park Service archaeologist "will walk the sites with them to head off any problems. I don't know what impact it will have on our personnel resources. They will get billed for all the time we take in monitoring the project."

To accurately depict the conditions at Kalaupapa at the height of the leprosy epidemic in Hawaii would require bringing in children, at least as extras. That is a prospect as potentially sticky as damage to endangered plants.

No one under 16 years of age is permitted within the Kalaupapa village. Even the grandchildren of patients may not come and stay. The restriction, which began when the state enforced mandatory isolation for Hansen's disease patients, has been continued at the behest of the Patients Advisory Council.

Henry Nalaielua, president of the council, said: "Of our concerns, children would be No. 1. If you're going to be real, it's a fact there were children here, a lot of children. (In recent times) we have never had children in en masse. . . . We have had children in to visit their parents."

"People's privacy would be second," Nalaielua said.

Rules concerning public access to the village are grounded in protecting the privacy of the remaining patients. Many of them contracted the disease before sulfone drugs were discovered and used to control its disfiguring effects.

Nalaielua said the patients' council will meet in March with film company representatives to voice its concerns.

"I think there is concern on how will you portray patients," he said. "People would have to consider, going back to the old days, you don't have anybody pretty, and how do you portray that without offending anybody? You can either make it famous or make it notorious.

"They are portraying an unpopular subject, even in today's standard," Nalaielua said.

"I don't think this will be an easy one to make."

Michael McCarten, Department of Health administrator at the settlement, said the film company crew has rented cottages at the Kalaupapa lighthouse and beach houses from patients to house the 40 people expected.

"It will not mean any extra work for our staff. It will cost the taxpayers nothing," he said.

Father Damien died in 1889 of leprosy after serving patients at the settlement for 16 years.

More than 7,000 people were sent to Kalaupapa after it was set up as a defense against the terrifying spread of the disease, which began in 1865. Mandatory quarantine ended in 1969.