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Crossing Spaces: Chuuk, Pohnpei & The Marshall Islands

Three women from Micronesia navigate the challenges of higher education to ensure their family’s survival both here in America and at home.

“A better life… good paying jobs…education for their children…” As the newest group of Pacific Islanders to arrive in the Hawaiian Islands, Micronesians aspire to the same dreams as every new immigrant group before them. Similarly, many face discrimination and poverty as they struggle to build new lives. Despite these obstacles, higher education remains the key to unlocking the American dream for themselves and their families. CROSSING SPACES is a series of three documentary shorts profiling three Micronesian women in Honolulu as they grapple with the challenges of higher education and work to enact meaningful change for their families and communities.

  • Lola Quan Bautista
    Director
    Breadfruit & Open Spaces
  • Lola Quan Bautista
    Producer
    Breadfruit & Open Spaces
  • Shirley Thompson
    Producer
    Finding Kukan, Special Circumstances, Breadfruit & Open Spaces
  • Yoana Amond
    Key Cast
    "self"
  • Nanette Fritz
    Key Cast
    "self"
  • Chimako Anitok
    Key Cast
    "self"
  • Shirley Thompson
    Editor
    Finding Kukan, Kū Kanaka: Stand Tall, Winning Girl, Breadfruit & Open Spaces
  • Valerie Narte
    Directors of Photography
    The Oversharer, Tijar, Drivel
  • Nathan Fitch
    Directors of Photography
    Island Soldier
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Short, Web / New Media
  • Runtime:
    16 minutes 40 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    April 20, 2018
  • Production Budget:
    30,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Lola Quan Bautista

Lola Quan Bautista is an associate professor at The Center for Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai‘i, Mānoa.

Lola's family is Chamorro, indigenous people of the Marianas, which includes Guam, and they own a ranch up the road from the Gill-Baza subdivision. For nearly twenty years, she has been doing research on Micronesian mobility and migration, with the past six years focused on the settlement of Pacific Islanders on Guam.

As a filmmaker, researcher and author, as well as a longtime neighbor living on her family’s nearby ranch, Lola Quan Bautista provides a big picture of life on Guam for the new migrants and contextualizes the struggles and experiences of her Pacific Islander neighbors.

She also published a journal article called “Building Sense Out of Households: Migrants from Chuuk (Re)create Local Settlements in Guam,” which focuses on the same residents of the Gill-Baza subdivision on Guam that are featured in Breadfruit & Open Spaces. In the article, Lola aims to discover how migrants from Chuuk interpret cultural and social change within a process commonly known as urbanization and modernization.

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