Māhū: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter

Māhū: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter 💖, dir. Lisette Marie Flanary, 2025, USA, 60 min., in English and Hawaiian

Thursday, June 19, 2025, 5:30 pm, KQED Headquarters, 2601 Mariposa St., SF
and in the “Queer Quartet Streaming Shorts” program in the Digital Screening Room

Mahu

(note: a search for “Mahu” on the Frameline website will not take you to the page for this film, because of the macrons (horizontal lines) over two of the vowels. You can either find it by time slot or by searching on the rest of the title, or use the link above. Ditto for the hula master Patrick Makuakane.)

“Māhū” can be an epithet hurled at drag queens and transgender people and anyone else who doesn’t properly perform their assigned binary gender, but it is being reclaimed as a point of pride, and was chosen as the name for a multimedia stage performance of Hawai’ian music and dance with an overarching theme of embracing traditional Native Hawai’ian concepts of gender fluidity. This documentary weaves clips from the stage performance with interviews with the performers, giving us a taste of the acceptance and honor that were accorded to māhū people in pre-colonial Hawai’i. It’s a powerful testament, a must see.

The Frameline screening at KQED will be followed by a live performance by hula master Patrick Makuakāne.

• IMDb (filmmaker) • trailer • official website • Mahu: A Trans-Pacific Love Letter