On Cannibalism

A modern mo olelo told in film, multilayered & steeped in melancholy, melodrama, metaphors, & magic. At once whimsical, stark, communicating a story both familiar, warm, & frenzied & fantastic. Set against the backdrops of the La Brea Tar Pits & oil refineries of Los Angeles, a young Hawaiian woman attempts to release the tensions caused by old forces manifesting in the different levels of her love & family lives. A film about the demons of myth, land, and origins.

In 1893, a 13-year-old girl comes to work for French painter Paul Gauguin as his maid and model. They called her Annah la Javanaise. This is a reimagining of her story.

ANANDA (in French: La Javanaise) is a fictional story, based on historical figures and events, of a young girls journey to find freedom and return home. In 1893, free-spirit ANANDA (13), lives happily with her little sister Tika (8) and their grandmother EMBAH (53) in a seaside village in Java. Yearning to be a shaman like Embah, Ananda enters the forbidden jungle and encounters a fierce TIGER. Suddenly, the girl and the tiger are both captured by traffickers. Ananda is sent to Paris, France where she works as a model and servant for a bohemian painter who abuses her. On a quest to return home, Ananda escapes, disguises herself as a boy, and encounters the Tiger again at the Cirque Fernando, where Ananda finds a new family among the misfits of the circus.

Four women, four cities, four unflinching stories—this powerful omnibus film weaves together the struggles of women across Indonesia, from a midwife battling corruption to a teenager caught in betrayal, a mother fighting for her child, and a widow facing the harsh truth of survival.

Abandoned by her mother when she was a baby, Rosa is obsessed with the old-style Hollywood movie star, Anna May Wong, who she fantasizes to be her mother. Raised in downtown Los Angeles by her “Uncle Otto”, an older queen and former hairdresser, Rosa’s deepest emotional relationships are with gay men, including her best friend Michael.