If you’ve paid much attention to Hawaiian politics lately, you know that the island’s rural communities are in a battle against Big Ag’s experimentation with GMO crops and advanced pesticides. This battle recently caught the attention of pro surfer/filmmaker Cyrus Sutton, who’s been surf tripping from his native California to Hawaii since his teens. Lately, his trips have had nothing to do with surfing. For the past eight months, Sutton has been filming a new documentary, “Island Earth,” that chronicles the struggles of Hawaiians to push back against the pesticides dousing their farmlands, and to retake control over their own food supply.
The film is scheduled for wide release in the summer of 2015, with a spate of film festival showings in the spring. I talked with Sutton last week from his temporary landing pad in Kauai.