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TheBuzz Erika Engle |
Kauai site pitches
aloha shirts and
warrior-inspired
screenplayIT'S a little reminiscent of the "Grace L. Ferguson Airline (and Storm Door Co.)" in an old Bob Newhart comedy bit, but an unusual dual-purpose e-commerce site is up and running from Kauai.
Aloha shirts handmade on Kauai are the first Garden Island product to be sold on the site at www.divineisland.com, but it is not the only product being pitched. The site also offers, for sale or investment, a screenplay "Na Pali Warriors," written by Tim Dineen and Natalia Ippolito, partners in the e-commerce venture.
"We actually dedicated two years into researching the film and just completed it," said Ippolito.
She describes herself and her partner as "semi-retired" regional television and radio writers from California. "Bay Area Ghosts," a project the two worked on, received an honorable mention in the New York International Independent Film Festival traveling event in Los Angeles last year.
"The main focus (of the site) is to sell the aloha shirts," she said. They are hand-made by Jacqueline Vienna, owner of Jacqueline on Kauai, a tailor shop in Hanapepe.
In time, Dineen and Ippolito hope to support more mom-and-pop shops by selling more Kauai-made products online.
It is not the shirts, but the screenplay that caused the couple to bid aloha to the mainland.
Vacationing on Kauai in 2001, they heard on a tour that in ancient Hawaii, teenage boys were sent to Kalalau Valley for five years to train to become warriors.
In the wee hours of that night Dineen sat bolt upright in bed with a vision for the screenplay, which was based on the warrior training tale, according to the Web site.
Upon their return to the mainland the couple sold everything and eventually "landed at Lihue, Kauai, airport, homeless."
Done not as a documentary but as a feature film, Dineen and Ippolito have pitched the screenplay in person and via e-mail to some positive response, but as industry observers have pointed out, even Mel Gibson couldn't sell his screenplay for "The Passion of the Christ," and financed production on his own.
Making "Na Pali Warriors" as an independent film with angel financing would be the couple's preference, Ippolito said.
The two have joined a board of directors that is working to establish the first Kauai Children's International Film and Television Festival.
"We'd like to promote Kauai as a family-friendly destination for cinema and media," said Tiffani Lizama, Kauai County film commissioner. "We've just developed the board and we're looking at Prince Kuhio weekend in 2005."
Dineen and Ippolito's dual-purpose Web site is what Lizama calls "grassroots." "I like to think we're trying to support the industry from the ground up. That's what we need in the islands," Lizama said.
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Erika Engle is a reporter with the Star-Bulletin. Call 529-4302, fax 529-4750 or write to Erika Engle, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., No. 7-210, Honolulu, HI 96813. She can also be reached at: eengle@starbulletin.com