2025 OHA Grant Project

In June 2024, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs (OHA) awarded ‘Uluʻulu a grant to digitize archival films and videotapes, making them available for public viewing through the Papakilo Database and ʻUluʻulu’s online catalog.  Over the 18-month grant period, preservation labs digitized fragile footage from 8mm and 16mm film reels, as well as 1/2″ EIAJ, Hi8, and DVCAM videotape formats.  These materials required urgent intervention due to their degrading physical condition.

By the project’s conclusion in December 2025, ʻUluʻulu successfully preserved and cataloged:

• 200 reels
• 71.5 hours of footage
• 13.32 TB of digital video preservation files 

The recovered footage documents significant people and events throughout Hawai’i’s history from the Kevin Coates, Bishop Museum Media, and Alexander and Baldwin Sugar Museum collections.

Kevin Coates Collection

Kevin Coates was a filmmaker from Hana, Maui, whose collection of 82 items primarily documents local and international activism over the past 60 years.  In the 1970s, Coates captured the journey of the Fri, a New Zealand-based vessel that traveled to Mururoa Atoll to protest French nuclear testing in French Polynesia.  Although rapid tape degradation resulted in some audio and visual loss, the digitized files retain a unique range of perspectives from scientists, political delegates, and crew members.  Coates also documented town hall meetings and other local gatherings covering issues related to the military occupation of Kahoʻolawe, Kingdom of Hawaiʻi sovereignty rights, and Native Hawaiian cultural practices.  Specifically, the collection highlights the activities of the Protect Kahoʻolawe ʻOhana and The Reinstated Hawaiian Government from the early 2000s.

Bishop Museum Media Collection

The 83 films digitized from the Bishop Museum Media collection offer a broad range of content representing diverse local communities throughout the early 1970s.  A significant portion of the footage originates from UH Today, a news-magazine program focused on student and faculty life at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, which aired on KHET (now PBS Hawaiʻi).  Episodes featured scripted segments on academic programs, sports, and student services alongside candid “man-on-the-street” style interviews.  The collection also includes A-roll and B-roll footage from other 1970s KHET programs, such as Hawaii Now and 8:30. On Hawaii Now, host Nino Martin interviewed people from all walks of life from Oʻahu, Kauaʻi, Maui, and Hawaiʻi Island.  The 8:30 program B-roll provides a lens into a variety of topics—for example, childcare and  the penitentiary system—which provide an interesting look into the relevant community issues from that era.   Additionally, four short programs by local filmmaker Tip Davis have been digitized.

Alexander and Baldwin Sugar Museum Collection

While it is the smallest collection in this grant, the Alexander and Baldwin Sugar Museum (ABSM) collection contains footage of agricultural operations on Maui and Oʻahu.  These segments offer an invaluable look at the growing and harvesting processes during the final decades of the sugar industry throughout the islands.  The ABSM collection also includes full-length programs entitled, “Short Story of Cane,” “The Last Trains of Hawaii,” and “The Sugar Islands, Our Home” which highlight Hawaiʻi’s railroad, sugar, and pineapple industries during the 1960s and 1970s.  Finally, the collection features amateur footage and home movies of Maui community events, including parades, sumo tournaments, and the centennial anniversary of the first Japanese immigrants’ arrival in Hawaiʻi.  Maui-born sumo wrestler Jesse Kuhaulua (Takamiyama Daigorō) is also featured prominently in several of these recordings.

Thank you again to OHA for supporting this preservation project so we can make these films accessible to the public for the first time in decades.  Preview the collection through ʻUluʻulu’s online catalog here.