Manu Aluli Meyer

This Film is a documentary film about the legacy of Hawaiian women Buddhists beginning with the life of Mary Mikahala Robinson Foster, lady in waiting to Queen Liliʻuokalani. While many have visited Foster Botanical Gardens in Honolulu, little has been known of her work to perpetuate the practice of Buddhism, even beyond Hawaiʻi, where she is revered in India and Sri Lanka for her contributions.

Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4,000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people. For five years the documentary production team Nā Maka o ka 'Āina ("the eyes of the land") captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea's unique 14,000-foot summit, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands: the mountain itself.