Doc Corner: The Hollywood history of 'Cane Fire'

By Glenn Dunks

A history of exploitation unfurls in Anthony Banua-Simon’s Cane Fire like the plot of a Hollywood movie. A deeply empathetic documentary, Cane Fire takes its title from a Lois Weber film, White Heat. That film, Weber’s last from 1934, is considered lost and survives only in images and fragments. As Banua-Simon shows, that is a lot like the non-white population of the island of Kaua’i, where it was filmed, who have been worked until their backs were broken by a series of industries that have crushed and sapped the non-white population like you would strip bare sugar cane.

First it was sugar cane and pineapples, then Hollywood who used locals as extras in bright and colourful productions starring big names like Elvis Presley and John Wayne. Today it’s tourism—an industry that has caused Hawaii more broadly to become the most expensive state to live in, something that is inceasingly out of grasp to many of the population who predominantly work as service staff at hotels and resorts. If you saw The White Lotus, then maybe you could consider this its darker companion piece...

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