Sorry, been gone for a while and I did not write a heads up for distant members on which film that we would be viewing for further online discussions.

Here is a summary:
First, Hawaii President Dan Long bought a new shack and wed a native wahine Tura.  Dan's new house is the Society's unofficial world HQ whether he knows it or not or likes it or not.  His new hale (home) feature a big 10 foot dia. screen and a blu-ray player which up scales regular DVDs to a higher resolution.  Also a handful of big wall mounted LCD screens were found everywhere showing our feature film.  Ample seating for everyone and displays of his prized South Seas 3-sheet posters and other South Seas original props, wardrobe and other posters are handsomely displayed around the main show room.  Dan owns "Long's Audio Video" which supplies and installs AV gear for home theaters and furnishes the equipment for our viewing so I need to give his company a shout out.

Back to the meeting itself, We had to move up the meeting a week because one of SSCS founders and current California Branch President Ed Rampell and his wife Alma made a last minute trip to Hawaii and they were our honored guests.  A few members RSVP'd that they were traveling (Cal, Marshall Is., and the arctic tundra-thank God for the Internet and emails) so we thought the turnout would be few but there was a lot of new faces and a crowded meeting.  The theme for the meeting was HAWAII FIVE-O and "Women in the South Seas".  FIVE-O which an episode was our opening short because the day before (Sept 20th) was the 40th anniversary of the popular TV shows premiere.  Our main feature was SOUTH SEAS WOMEN one of three South Seas movies that Burt Lancaster did in 1953.  This film also starred Virginia Mayo and Chuck Connors.  Burt's other two movies that year: FROM HERE TO ETERNITY with an Oscar nomination and HIS MAJESTY O'KEEFE.  Anyway Ed was to bring the movie with him from Cali so as a back up (in case he forgot to bring SOUTH SEAS WOMEN) I brought a rare and not yet released in the US film called RIVER QUEEN (2005) Silverscreen (NZ/UK), a story of a young Irish woman who immigrated to Aotearoa (NZ) in the middle of the Maori/English wars. She is caught in the middle with a father fighting for the British army and having fallen in love with a Maori teen and mothering a half cast son out of wedlock. Stars Samantha Morton, Rawiri Pene, Cliff Curtis, Temuera Morrison, Wi Kuki Kaa, Kiefer Sutherland and Stephen Rea.  Rea is an Oscar nominee (CRYING GAME) and Curtis, Morrison and Kaa are all Maori's from our "Beach of Fame" page in our main southseascinema.org website.  When I research this film on the web I knew this was a "must have" because of the cast alone.  I found and bought (all on the web) the French version (which like most discs are English base so all one has to do is turn off the French sub titles and you got an English film) It was a legal but an international released film-not regional code so we were lucky.  Rampell agreed this was a "must see" and insisted that we see it since no one in the room has seen it. 

Turn out to be a good move and a great film.  Long running but highly recommended.  The script seemed true to history as far as back ground but the main theme of war, allegiance and stressful individual conflict is universal.  The room was silent through the whole viewing until the end with huge applause.  But of the discussion afterwards there was a theory that this film hasn't been distributed in the US because the US industry feels it is about a past war in a distant location and most centric American would not be interested.  But judging by the crowd of over 80% American born members there was a very negative reaction to this probably true theory because "all these Americans" loved the movie.  Typical of the bad decision making by the heads of Hollywood.  The Irish river queen fit with the night's theme as well a tiny tribute to Dan's new wife Tura for letting Dan continue in his South Seas Cinema ways and letting us in and letting Dan put up his posters.  In her honor and in keeping with the "Women in the South Seas" theme we were going to show a clip of our genre Queen Dorothy Lamour as jungle goddess, Tura in HER JUNGLE LOVE (1938) PARAMOUNT with Ray Milland.  I thought I had the movie but I didn't so we will show it next time.  Tura Long is now the member of our Society whether she wants to be or not with the highest membership category, GODDESS.  Finally Ed did a report on the "Tiki Luau Nights" at the Egyptian Theatre in L.A. last July.  The event shows a lot of South Seas movies for two days and nights.  Ed went with California Vice President Luis Reyes.  A hui ho (until we meet or write again)!