Obake Files


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The Obake Files


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Supernatural Hawaii


Book Description

Ancient Hawaiian warriors march in the night, mysterious blue lights hover and zip, tiny people disappear, and invisible spirits attack: These are just some of the stories that Hawaii's supernatural side has to offer. Islanders tell of their true experiences beyond the veil with Madam Pele, goddess of the volcano; akuas, guardian protector spirits of sharks or white owls; and phantoms who glide in the night. Read the ghostly memories from Island kaimaaina (long-time residents) luminaries Inez Ashdown of Maui and Auntie Harriet Ne of Molokai, kahunas (Hawaiian Shaman) Charles Kenn, Emma "Nana" Veary, and Mary Kawena Pukui, author Julius S. Rodman, and members of the Hawaii State Fire Department. Shiver as you delve into a unique and spirited slice of Hawaii never before shared.




Folding Paper


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This beautiful origami art book is a collection of the best contemporary pieces from some of the worlds most renowned papercraft artists. Thanks to pioneering masters such as Dr. Robert J. Lang, origami has transcended its humble roots as a traditional Japanese papercraft to take its place among the global fine arts. In Folding Paper: The Infinite Possibilities of Origami, Dr. Lang and Asian art curator Meher McArthur chronicle origami's remarkable evolution and showcases the widespread applications of paper folding solutions in the fields of contemporary mathematics, engineering, design, and the international peace movement. Based around a groundbreaking museum show by the same name, Folding Paper features the work of more than forty leading origami artists from around the world. It traces the development of paper folding in both the East and the West, recognizing the global influences on this international art form. Now in the early twenty-first century, origami is a sophisticated fine art form consisting of many different styles, from representational to geometric, abstract, and even conceptual. It has become a symbol of peace, an inspiration for engineers, and a conduit for scientific advancement. Featured origami artists include: Brian Chan Erik Joisel Erik and Martin Demaine Tomoko Fuse Daniel Kwan Michael LaFosse Jeannine Moseley Akira Yoshizawa Combining Dr. Lang's and McArthur's illuminating narrative history with lavish color photographs of more than sixty breathtaking works—from Joel Cooper's haunting Cyrus mask to Linda Tomoko Mihara's delicate Crane Cube to Eric Joisel's lifelike Pangolin model—Folding Paper is an enthralling introduction to the contemporary art of paper folding.




Legendary Hawai'i and the Politics of Place


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Hawaiian legends figure greatly in the image of tropical paradise that has come to represent Hawai'i in popular imagination. But what are we buying into when we read these stories as texts in English-language translations? Cristina Bacchilega poses this question in her examination of the way these stories have been adapted to produce a legendary Hawai'i primarily for non-Hawaiian readers or other audiences. With an understanding of tradition that foregrounds history and change, Bacchilega examines how, following the 1898 annexation of Hawai'i by the United States, the publication of Hawaiian legends in English delegitimized indigenous narratives and traditions and at the same time constructed them as representative of Hawaiian culture. Hawaiian mo'olelo were translated in popular and scholarly English-language publications to market a new cultural product: a space constructed primarily for Euro-Americans as something simultaneously exotic and primitive and beautiful and welcoming. To analyze this representation of Hawaiian traditions, place, and genre, Bacchilega focuses on translation across languages, cultures, and media; on photography, as the technology that contributed to the visual formation of a westernized image of Hawai'i; and on tourism as determining postannexation economic and ideological machinery. In a book with interdisciplinary appeal, Bacchilega demonstrates both how the myth of legendary Hawai'i emerged and how this vision can be unmade and reimagined.




Film Technique and Film Acting


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This vintage book contains two pioneering volumes on the subject of film making by V.I. Pudovkin. Considered two of the most valuable manuals of the practice and theory of film making ever written, these texts will prove invaluable for the student or film enthusiast, and are not to be missed by discerning collectors of such literature. The chapters of this volume include: 'The Film Scenario and Its Theory', 'Film Director and Film Material', 'Types Instead of Actors', 'Close-Ups in Time', 'Asynchronism as a Principle of Sound Film', 'Rhythmic Problems in my First Sound Film', 'Notes and Appendices', 'Film Acting', et cetera. Vsevolod Illarionovich Pudovkin (1893 – 1953) was a Russian film director, screenwriter, and actor, famous for developing influential theories of montage. This volume is being republished now complete with a new prefatory biography of the author.




My Search for Ramanujan


Book Description

"The son of a prominent Japanese mathematician who came to the United States after World War II, Ken Ono was raised on a diet of high expectations and little praise. Rebelling against his pressure-cooker of a life, Ken determined to drop out of high school to follow his own path. To obtain his father’s approval, he invoked the biography of the famous Indian mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan, whom his father revered, who had twice flunked out of college because of his single-minded devotion to mathematics. Ono describes his rocky path through college and graduate school, interweaving Ramanujan’s story with his own and telling how at key moments, he was inspired by Ramanujan and guided by mentors who encouraged him to pursue his interest in exploring Ramanujan’s mathematical legacy. Picking up where others left off, beginning with the great English mathematician G.H. Hardy, who brought Ramanujan to Cambridge in 1914, Ono has devoted his mathematical career to understanding how in his short life, Ramanujan was able to discover so many deep mathematical truths, which Ramanujan believed had been sent to him as visions from a Hindu goddess. And it was Ramanujan who was ultimately the source of reconciliation between Ono and his parents. Ono’s search for Ramanujan ranges over three continents and crosses paths with mathematicians whose lives span the globe and the entire twentieth century and beyond. Along the way, Ken made many fascinating discoveries. The most important and surprising one of all was his own humanity."




Defiant Indigeneity


Book Description

"Aloha" is at once the most significant and the most misunderstood word in the Indigenous Hawaiian lexicon. For K&257;naka Maoli people, the concept of "aloha" is a representation and articulation of their identity, despite its misappropriation and commandeering by non-Native audiences in the form of things like the "hula girl" of popular culture. Considering the way aloha is embodied, performed, and interpreted in Native Hawaiian literature, music, plays, dance, drag performance, and even ghost tours from the twentieth century to the present, Stephanie Nohelani Teves shows that misunderstanding of the concept by non-Native audiences has not prevented the K&257;naka Maoli from using it to create and empower community and articulate its distinct Indigenous meaning. While Native Hawaiian artists, activists, scholars, and other performers have labored to educate diverse publics about the complexity of Indigenous Hawaiian identity, ongoing acts of violence against Indigenous communities have undermined these efforts. In this multidisciplinary work, Teves argues that Indigenous peoples must continue to embrace the performance of their identities in the face of this violence in order to challenge settler-colonialism and its efforts to contain and commodify Hawaiian Indigeneity.




Pandemonium and Parade


Book Description

Monsters known as yōkai have long haunted the Japanese cultural landscape. This history of the strange and mysterious in Japan seeks out these creatures in folklore, encyclopedias, literature, art, science, games, manga, magazines and movies, exploring their meanings in the Japanese imagination over three centuries.




Mysteries of Hawai'i


Book Description

Many people who live outside the island state don't realize that, like anywhere else, many places in Hawai'i are very haunted, perhaps more so. Local residents seem to take Hawaii's hauntings as a part of everyday life. Lopaka Kapanui is Hawaii's "Ghost Guy" who collects and shares the ghost stories of Hawai'i.Na Mo'olelo Lapu is a collection of ghost stories from different people who have lived in Hawai'i long enough to have experienced their own hauntings personally. From an old woman who longs for her lost child and a Royal Princess who has been known to make a ghostly appearance, to an old Hawaiian man in a former hospital and a regal man who died in a tragic accident, Kapanui shares a myriad of stories of the ghosts of different cultures who all lived, and died, in Hawai'i.Some of the tales are the author's own experiences while others have been shared by those who were haunted. All of them are true as told by everyday people.