When the Marshall Islands film "Morning Comes So Soon" began its run at the K&K Theater in Majuro in May, the schedule called for screenings once, maybe twice a week.

Turns out the Marshallese had never seen anything like the touching film, which featured their neighbors instead of actors. The story of teenage love, bitter prejudice and the region's alarming trend of youth suicide, attracted thousands of islanders to the three-plex. Multiple daily screenings were needed.

Despite this hometown popularity, the film might not have reached audiences beyond the shores of the Micronesian island nation. But organizers of the new Pacific Islands Film Festival in Honolulu had not seen anything quite like it, either. Tomorrow, they'll present its international debut.

The free, three-day film festival features dramas and documentaries that focus on diverse Pacific island cultures whose issues are rarely discussed outside their own communities: generational rivalries in Fiji, rising sea levels on Tuvalu, Samoan youth searching for their ethnic identity in big cities, tribal wars in Papua New Guinea.

The festival is being presented by the Pacific Basin Institute at Pomona College in California and the Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa. All films will be screened in the Cupola Theatre, on the second floor of the Honolulu Design Center on Kapi'olani Boulevard.

Of the 11 films, "Morning Comes So Soon" looms as the fledgling festival's most important selection, said the man who chose them, Vilsoni Hereniko. It offers a perspective of the Pacific that has never been explored before on the screen.

"This is the first feature film from the Marshall Islands that uses Marshallese in the lead roles," Hereniko said. "This allows people from within the culture and the society to tell their own stories and to kind of examine themselves in a way that is, I think, very delicate."

Two teachers at Majuro's Assumption High School produced and directed the film, which was hailed as the first effort to explore the relationship between the Marshallese and its immigrant Chinese population, which began arriving in the late 1990s. The film stars a pair of students from the Catholic school.

"There is no film that I know of that focuses on racial issues between Pacific Islanders and Asians," said Hereniko, a filmmaker and professor at the Center for Pacific Islands Studies.

"The film raises the issue of suicide among the young people and gives us an explanation," he said. "It is very much a 'Romeo and Juliet' love story within a Marshallese context."

Hereniko chose films that he felt would trigger discussion when they were over.

"We were interested in films that portray the Pacific in a very different light, moving away from the kind of romanticized idealized stereotypical view of the islands," he said. "These are films that raise contemporary issues."

In the comedy "Samoan Wedding," which screened here at the Hawaii International Film Festival, "The Fire is Burning" and "Naming No. 2," filmmakers examine what happens when Samoans and Fijians leave their island homes for urban communities, such as Los Angeles and Auckland, New Zealand.

"They are living overseas and have their own struggles with their identity," Hereniko said. "They have to negotiate multiple identities."

The documentary "Tanim: A Struggle for Power" followed members of a 12,000-year-old tribe as they adapt to the modern world and concepts like democracy within a tribal setting. The film is set in Papua New Guinea, where some remote communities did not encounter western society until 50 years ago, Hereniko said.

"This film gives tremendous insight into the struggles that indigenous people have to grapple with as they move into a western democratic society," he said.

THE FESTIVAL'S FOCUS

Creating a focused film festival was an idea first discussed a year ago, when Hereniko was contacted by Dru Gladney, president of the Pacific Basin Institute. Gladney wanted to reach out not only to those interested in Pacific island cultures, but to Institute alumni living in Hawai'i.

Gladney felt that other film festivals in Hawai'i overshadowed the Pacific islands' point of view. He's pleased with Hereniko's choices.

"I think we fail to recognize the extraordinary diversity in the region and that comes out very well in the films," Gladney said.

"I think the point of this festival is to say that this area is really not that remote. It is showing how connected this region is to the rest of the world, struggling to form similar perspectives on similar issues."

The festival will have a Hawai'i focus as well. Organizers plan to open with footage shot by an unidentified U.S. aviator sometime in the 1920s or 1930s and will close with an award-winning film by Eddie and Myrna Kamae. Short films by students at the UH-Manoa Academy for Creative Media also will be screened.

The aviator's footage — eight minutes worth selected from about 15 hours of 16mm film — represents a mystery for the Pacific Basin Institute. The footage was donated to Institute founder Frank Gibney, who died in 2006 without telling anyone where it came from, Gladney said. The hope is someone in the audience will recognize the footage and help the institute learn more about its origins.

"It's some really beautiful, interesting material," he said. "There are some Downtown Honolulu shots, a lot of beach material. It's really a kind of wide-ranging collection. It's really fascinating."

The Kamaes' film "Keepers of the Flame," which tells the story of how three female Hawaiian icons helped preserve their culture, will be the festival's last screening. The award-winning film profiles scholar and linguist Mary Kawena Pukui, hula master 'Iolani Luahine, and songwriter and educator Edith Kanaka'ole.

Before the screening, Eddie Kamae, an 'ukulele master and folk singer, will perform.

Giving Pacific islanders a vehicle for their own voices creates what Myrna Kamae called "authentic cultural continuity." The documentaries allow new generations to hear the unfiltered stories of their elders.

"I think it's an essential element of the continuity of their cultures," she said. "I think it is central to who they are and letting people know about their stories."