THE ARTS
COURTESY GIRL FEST
Sisters in Sound, an all-female deejay group, is just one of the acts in this year's GiRL FeST. The group actively promotes the visibility of women in the deejay world.
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Powerful voices
GiRL FeST encourages female empowerment through art, education and a bit of 'tude
In its third annual go-round, GiRL FeST Hawai'i plans another lively party celebrating female empowerment. But as always, it'll be balanced by the festival's stated core goal of changing "peer culture in order to prevent increasing violence against women and girls through education, art and positive representations of women."
GiRL FeST Hawaii
The third-annual event runs Friday through Sept. 17.
Programs: Available at Honolulu Academy of Arts' Doris Duke Theatre, The ARTS at Marks Garage and The rRed Elephant, or download from www.girlfesthawaii.org.
Tickets: Available via www.girlfesthawaii.org or www.honolulubox-office.com, or charge by phone at 550-8457 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays
Call: 599-3931
» See schedule of events
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The festival's opening weekend is highlighted by Friday's "Comedy and the Rock" at the ARTS at Marks Garage, featuring a triumvirate of strong performers, raucous stand-up comic Ali Wong, poetry slam champ and returning festival guest Alix Olson, and Boston folk rocker Pamela Means.
Wong is a Bay Area product who revels in destroying the quiet and demure Asian female archetype. She's described as "more raw than a Radical Cheerleader at a Cherry Blossom festival."
While this will be Wong's debut in the islands, she has performed in Seattle, "which is basically diet San Francisco, but it's still out-of-state," she said. "I started performing stand-up comedy a year ago because I've always been the funny kid in class and wanted to see if my humor went beyond my peers."
Wong said she continues to develop her material and outrageous stage presence with a steady diet of performing at open-mic nights, "writing in the middle of the night, riding public transportation and interacting with middle-aged alcoholics on a daily basis."
Means promises that, guitar in hand, she will give the Honolulu audience music that is "a little sweet, a little sass, deep, deep grooves and a big phat ass."
COURTESY GIRL FEST
Rockabilly band The Hell Caminos.
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In the proud tradition of issue-charged American folk, "a good percentage of my songs get right up in the face of the status quo, challenging it into self-reflection," Means said. "Every target is warranted, especially the current (Bush) administration."
But she'll also present "fragile little love songs to balance things out. They're all love songs, really, if you think about it. I may sneak a little jazz in as well, as I'm about to release an album of my new side project called the Pamela Means Jazz Project."
Alix Olson will be a double threat, arriving with a new film to be shown the following week as part of the FeST's film festival.
Concerning her state of mind these days, Olson said, "the political portion of my brain feels much like a swamped inbox. I'm trying to give myself the time to understand the current world around me. I'm invested in expressing the integrity of both my politics and my art form, coalescing the two in an authentic and non-pedantic way."
COURTESY GIRL FEST
Guitarist Johnny Helm.
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"Left Lane," her documentary film, "came about as a result of my tour manager Samantha Farinella -- who's also a filmmaker -- and realizing that, somewhat selfishly, we craved a journal of our artistic-political journey. Touring for a living demands a lot of daily detailing and we began to forget what we did yesterday, much less during the past year.
"On a more macrocosmic level, we were inspired by (populist historian) Howard Zinn's assertion that performance touring is one of the highest levels of grassroots media, connecting the dots of political struggle from town to town."
Their footage could serve as an example of that concept, she said. "It felt -- and feels -- pretty narcissistic at times, but when we think about young activists generations from now looking back at the archives ... they'll know that there were people working to inspire genuine voices."
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GiRL FeST Hawaii Events
Friday
7 p.m.: "Comedy and the Rock" with Ali Wong, Alix Olson and Pamela Means. The ARTS at Marks Garage, 1159 Nuuanu Ave.; $8
9 p.m.: Rachel Kann hosts opening-night concert featuring Jennifer Johns, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Paula Fuga, Jocelyn de Leon and LaPaz. The rRed Elephant, 1144 Bethel St.; $10; all ages.
Saturday
11 a.m.: "Get Your Poem On" workshop with Kann, The ARTS at Marks Garage. Admission $10; $5 ages 18 and under; free to public and charter school students.
1 p.m.: "Web-Fu" workshop, Small Business Resource Center, 1041 Nuuanu Ave., Suite A at Hotel Street. Cost is $15, with waivers for families in need. Must have a MySpace page.
3 p.m.: "Call Me By My Name" workshop, The ARTS at Marks Garage. Admission $10; $5 ages 18 and under; free to public and charter school students.
6 p.m.: "The Outcast," story reading by Kann, with music by DJ Primmitiv, The ARTS at Marks Garage. Sliding scale donation $5 to $10.
8 p.m.: "The Sexy Smart Party" hosted by Wong, featuring United By Sound, Slanty Eyed Mama, X-Factor and Malcognitas. The rRed Elephant, 1144 Bethel St. $10; all ages.
Sunday
All events at The ARTS at Marks Garage:
Noon: "Speakeasy" workshop with Olson. Admission $10; $5 for ages 18 and under; free to public and charter school students.
3 p.m.: "Spoken Word, Spoken True" workshop by Joseph. Admission $10; $5 for ages 18 and under; free to public and charter school students.
7 p.m.: "The GiRL FeST Open Mic" hosted by Selah Geissler, with music by DJ Rebel Girl. Sliding-scale donation $5 to $10.
Monday
6 p.m.: "Fathering Strength, Forgiving Fear" men's leadership panel with documentary filmmaker Byron Hurt; LaPaz's Ricardo Chavez; Joseph Bloom, assistant director of therapeutic services of Catholic Charities Hawaii; and Jon Osorio, director of the Center for Hawaiian Studies. At the center, 2645 Dole St. Free.
Sept. 15
The GiRL FeST Film Festival runs Sept. 14 to 17, Doris Duke Theatre, Honolulu Academy of Arts, 900 S. Beretania St. (enter on Kinau Street). Tickets are $6. These are films for the first night; the remainder of the film festival's schedule and other special events will be in next week's HiLife section.
6 p.m.: "Calcutta Hilton," "Made in Brazil: Dreams at Work" and "Bodies and Souls"
8 p.m.: "Dirty Mary" and "Awake Zion"
Also: 8 p.m. festival reception party, "Groove Towards the Fulfillment: Empowering Her Voice, Stopping the Violence," featuring slam poetry and music, at Ong King Art Center, 184 N. King St. at River Street. Cover is $5; all ages (BYOB for those 21 and over).
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