Mission

“Hello & Goodbye” is the culmination of five passion projects from writer and director Thomas Chock. Over a decade in the making, these stories each feature characters navigating the challenges of living in modern Hawaii, ultimately finding themselves in dire circumstances with their lives at stake. These films are each of a different genre, spanning from contemporary drama, to heightened-realism, to thriller, to comedy, to faux-documentary. 

The mission of “Hello & Goodbye” is twofold: First, to share the underrepresented stories of Hawaii’s people and history with a global audience. While the characters, plot details, and aesthetics are unique to Hawaii, the themes are universal. These stories aim to capture the innate drama of life-or-death situations, along with the profound, and often beautiful, revelations that come with them. When faced with one’s mortality, deep questions arise, which can only be satisfied by deep truths. These short films will explore those truths. 

Second, the production of “Hello & Goodbye” will take place in the caring and expert hands of local talent. In the past, the scarcity of film production resources and infrastructure in Hawaii made it very difficult to create local films of professional caliber. This is no longer the case. The multitude of filmmaking talent trained by the University of Hawaii, coupled with the advent of new sophisticated and accessible tools, have opened the doors to top-tier independent film production in Hawaii. 

Hawaiian stories, produced by Hawaiian talent, are the future. “Hello and Goodbye” aims to be among the first feature-length, locally produced films to awaken the world to the real beauty of Hawaii: the one which lives beyond the beaches and palm trees, in the hearts of the real people who call Hawaii home.