A Message from the President

Aloha Brothers and Sisters:

This New Year of the Horse finds our local SAG-AFTRA membership, board and staff leaders off and running.

On the local work front, film and television projects continue at last year’s pace, with Hawaii Five-0 leading the charge, and with Jurassic World and numerous Japanese productions, ultra-low-budget and short and student films adding to the mix of expanded professional employment work opportunities for Hawaii’s considerable talent.
           
After many years of hard and dedicated work by Executive Director Brenda Ching and President Glenn Cannon, together with Joel Moffett and Tom Brislin at the University of Hawaii’s Academy for Creative Media, our members can now work in student films as well as participate in table reads.
           
Our conservatory program continues apace, offering high-level training to our members through the offerings of such professional master teachers as Scott Rogers, Iris Klein and, more recently, Theo Coumbis.
           
On the national front, board delegates participated in the historic, first-ever SAG-AFTRA National Convention in Los Angeles. Numerous national committees are now populated by your local board members, including members-at-large. We are indeed fortunate in surviving the necessary budget cuts that forced the closing of 10 local offices on the mainland.
           
Here at home, we participated in the annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday parade, attended the annual local AFL-CIO convention and continued to liaise with our state film office and legislature to insure a viable tax environment to facilitate Hawaii’s attraction for mainstream productions. Plans are in the works to have general membership meetings on the neighbor islands in 2014 and 2015. Finally, as members of the AFL-CIO, we supported the long-overdue minimum wage bill as a step toward social and economic justice for all.

New initiatives, such as a Script 2 Screen program modeled after ones developed by the Houston-Austin and Dallas-Fort Worth locals and others, are being planned.
           
The work continues, and I am extremely proud to be a part of an extraordinary group of professionals who labor mightily to encourage quality work opportunities for our members as well as to insure safe and fair working conditions for all.           
           
In solidarity,

David C. Farmer
Hawaii Local President

This item was originally featured in the March 2014 local newsletter.