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Vol. 09 Issue 1, Winter 2004
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Heart of the Sea: Kaplioka’ehukai is an exquisite film that does not have a dull moment. It is about Rell “Kapolioka’ehukai” Sunn who was a pioneer of women’s professional surfing, one of the great women athletes of the twentieth century, a single mother, community-builder, peerless spearfisher, woman of amazing physical power and luminous beauty, and someone who died of breast cancer at the age of 47 after a 14-year struggle with the disease. Like Rell herself, the film is more about the ocean than the illness, more about connection than separation, more about being protected than being hurt.
There is no lecturing or posturing. There only a small, quiet scene where Rell tells a group of women in her Hawaiian community that there is no explanation for her diagnosis of breast cancer at the age of 32 after a lifetime of healthy living and swimming in the sea, when she was at the peak of her physical strength, when she had no known risk factors for breast cancer. There are only childhood memories of being the best skateboarder in her neighborhood so she was the one who could always catch up with the pesticide-spraying truck and hold on to the back of it while it pulled her around the neighborhood drenching her with pesticides.
Most of all this is Rell’s story, one that is bigger than illness and filled with life. Everyone should see this film. It will crack your heart wide open.
Andi Gladstone was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1994. She produced documentaries for network television for 17 years and is currently director of the New York State Breast Cancer Support and Education Network.
Program on Breast Cancer and Environmental Risk Factors
Cornell University, College of Veterinary Medicine
Vet Box 31, Ithaca, NY 14853-6401
Phone: 607.254.2893; Fax: 607.254.4730
Email: breastcancer@cornell.edu
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