Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Jeannette Paulson Hereniko finds
By Cynthia Oi
life after the Film Festival to
be full of adventure
Star-BulletinShe was a storyteller, then a public affairs officer, founder-director of a film festival. She was a wife and a mother. Then she divorced, becoming a single woman resigned to being that way.
Now, she is again a storyteller and again a wife. The labels are the same but not the woman.
Jeannette Paulson Hereniko will celebrate her metamorphosis today, her birthday, by getting up on stage and telling her story to as many people as will listen.
It's not that hers is extraordinary, but that she wants to incite others to do the same.
"It is a milestone birthday for me," said the vibrant 60-year-old as she relaxed at her Kuliouou townhouse full of Asian and Pacific art and crafts. "And I felt that at this season of time in my life I'm ready to acknowledge the ghosts of my past and come to terms with a lot of things and publicly share my story."
A storytelling performance by Jeannette Paulson Hereniko: 'WILD WISDOM'
On stage: 7:30 p.m. today and May 30
Called "Wild Wisdom," it is a tribute to her maternal grandmother from whom she inherited her instincts for storytelling. It is also an acknowledgment of her husband, who she says encourages her to define herself and gives her "unconditional love."
Hereniko may be best remembered as founder and director of the Hawaii International Film Festival, which she left in 1995 after 15 years.
"I think those were the deepest and most meaningful years of my life," she recalled, "working with the people of Hawaii to empower minorities, to have their voices and images seen as equal to the Hollywood images."
At the same time, she allowed work to keep her in a cocoon, she said.
Hereniko was born and raised in Portland, Ore., by parents who were often at odds with each other.
"It was rough at home, not an ideal childhood," she said.
But summers were different. Summers she went to stay with her grandmother, who rented out vacation cottages at a seaside town.
"Those were the happiest times," she said. "I remember we'd clean the cottages and then she'd tell me happy stories about when she was a little girl and teach me nursery rhymes. She was the one who really supported me through tough times."
"With my parents, it was a case where they didn't get divorced but should have.
"So I escaped -- I escaped through movies, I escaped through storytelling, I escaped through marriage," she said.
At 19, she left her parents' home and moved to her new husband's. She became pregnant quickly, eventually had three children, and like her parents, stayed in a difficult marriage. Her first husband wasn't happy with her career and her activities, such as organizing a storytelling guild, children's festivals and TV programs. He wanted her to stay home. Finally, they divorced.
She didn't look for new relationships because she didn't think she'd be successful.
"I made a conscious decision that I would be alone and celibate."
Instead, she worked hard.
"I was just so involved and gave everything I could to the festival."
It was after she had resigned from the film festival that love and romance swirled into her life in the form of Vilsoni Hereniko, a Fijian filmmaker, writer and now a professor at the Center for Pacific Island Studies at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.
The two had been friends for several years, but because of her state of mind and their age difference of about 15 years, she didn't think of him as a potential match.
"We were friends and actually I fixed him up with other women. I was just totally floored when he asked me out and asked to change our relationship from friendship to romance."
Although she loved HIFF, it limited her in other areas of her life.
"When I shifted my thinking and was open to love, it entered into my heart. Upon reflection, I think there were other opportunities for romance but I wasn't ready."
She helps pay bills by working with film schools and film festivals on the mainland and in Asia.
Although she and her husband share interests and collaborate often, she maintains her individuality. "We get so excited and support each other's work. He deserves a lot of credit for me doing this (storytelling). "But I take my own credit, too. I'm not merging my life to his. We have our own separate lives, but they are compatible. It's built on good friendship."
Hereniko finds love liberating.
"The romance allowed me to be myself completely with another individual who accepted me and didn't see me as unusual," she said. "It has let me slow down and not feel guilty. I always felt I had to do and accomplish instead of just being. I am allowed the time to explore what I want to do for me. And that's writing and going back to my storytelling."
"Wild Wisdom" is a personal outlook.
"I believe in wild wisdom. You have to let go of your own expectations, your judgments. That's the wild part. Then you have to call in your own wisdom, the inner voice who knows who we are, but we're afraid to listen to. We're afraid of rejection, that we might not live up to it.
"The wisdom mixes with the wildness inside of ourselves. That combination is what I want for my life."
She hopes her storytelling will spark people to tell their own.
"I don't want people to say, 'Oh, isn't Jeannette Paulson Hereniko a butterfly doing this wonderful performance.' It will be successful if it sends the audience on their own personal journeys, to recognize their wild wisdom."
Click for online
calendars and events.
