“The Mauna is supposed to be silent,” says protestor Hawane Rios on a twilight drive up Hawai’i’s Mauna Kea, barely clearing the industrial whine of 13 observatories. “It’s supposed to be the quietest place on Earth.” Jalena Keane-Lee’s 2024 educational documentary, Standing Above the Clouds, is dedicated to righteous noise in pursuit of that silence as Native Hawaiians rally to prevent construction of the fourteenth and largest, known as the Thirty Meter Telescope.
But this civil unrest does not look like the kind regularly televised on the national networks. For one thing, these protestors prefer the term “protectors.” Their call to arms was delivered by ancestral vision to young Kapulei Flores, who first communed with her forebears at age nine. The message was simple: “Can you try again?” That’s all it took for generations of Hawaiian protectors, like the three sets of mothers and daughters spotlighted here, to risk their lives for Mauna Kea. In terrestrial terms, the mountain is the world’s tallest peak when measured from the ocean floor, but, per a millennium of tradition, it is the sky-scraped domain of the gods. On account, their years-long struggle against police, industry, foreign interests, and global pandemic is an intimate kaleidoscope of ecology, spirituality, and family. Recommended.
Why should libraries add Standing Above the Clouds to their collection?
There is no detaching life from the mountain. No amount of editing could keep it from swallowing close-ups and dwarfing ceremonial dances like a carpet rolled gently from heaven itself. What the film demonstrates beautifully, without need of words and regardless of personal belief, is how much we owe the land. We live with it, not merely on it; even when Flores takes a well-earned skateboard break, her empty parking lot of choice lies in Mauna Kea’s lap. Standing Above the Clouds is a worthwhile addition to any library not only as a resource on Hawaiian culture but a universal, on-the-pulse reminder of what we should all be fighting for.
Is Standing Above the Clouds a good fit for educational programming?
At a scant 83 minutes, where Standing Above the Clouds comes up short is modern history. The sheer vocabulary alone makes this a compelling lesson for indigenous studies, but its strictly personal lens comes at the cost of resonant context. There’s a distinct gap between its 70-year montage of Native outcry and high-definition footage of proud teenagers gearing up for their first protest. Leina’ala Sleightholm, one of the maternal subjects, admits to falling away from Hawaiian tradition until her own mother talked her into dance lessons as an adult. The Gen X malaise that this cause seems to have shaken off is unexplored and brushed aside as good riddance, just like any Native support of the Thirty Meter Telescope. As an educational documentary, the film offers plenty of perspective on social justice, environmentalism, and grassroots organizing, but the scope irons out most of the complexity that collegiate audiences might expect. Standing Above the Clouds is best programmed for high school courses dabbling in sociology, particularly the human cost of protest, but heed its trigger warning—besides an honest depiction of the medications necessary just to overcome the associated anxieties, this does cover the suicide of a tragically young protector.
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