Along Hawaiʻi’s shorelines grows naupaka kahakai, the beach naupaka. High in the mountains grows naupaka kuahiwi, the mountain naupaka. Both bear what look like half-flowers, all the petals on one side, as if someone had torn each bloom in two.
The best-known legend says someone did. Naupaka, a young woman, fell in love with Kaui, a fisherman of no rank, and their love was kapu, forbidden. They climbed to the heiau to ask the kahuna whether they could ever be together, and the gods answered with a storm. Naupaka tore the white flower from her hair and gave half to Kaui. He went down to live by the sea and she went up into the mountains, and the two naupaka have bloomed in halves ever since. Like many Hawaiian stories it has other tellings; in some, it is the goddess Pele who drives the lovers apart.
They say that if the two halves are ever joined, the lovers are together again. Marjorie and I spent months looking for the mountain and the sea naupaka in bloom at the same time. The photographs near the end of the film are ours, taken the day we finally found both.
How it was made. Video generated with ByteDance Seedance 2.5 (via Runway). Narration and music by ElevenLabs. Photographs by Craig and Marjorie Walsh. Script and sound mix with Claude, by Anthropic. Edited in Filmora.
The film is also at camera-hawaii.com.