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One film I will highlight is Diamond Head (1963) starring Charlton Heston and James Darren. I'll quote from the program guide.
Charlton Heston plays King Howland, scion of a pineapple dynasty who oversees his Oahu plantation on a white horse and is courted as a senator for the new state, even though his racism is apparent to all. His political ambitions and anti-native bigotry, however, are disturbed by an engagement between his beloved younger sister (Yvette Mimieux) and her underachieving native boyfriend (James Darren), whose potential inheritance of the family name and fortune Howland can't stomach. But how can he forbid this alliance when he himself has a secret Chinese mistress (France Nuyen), now pregnant with his child? Howland's hereditary control over all he surveys is beginning to crumble with the dawning of a new era–and a new kind of man, embodied in Dean Kahana, the fiancé's mixed-blood brother (George Chakiris), who's become a doctor without any patronage from the King. Just the idea of hapa haole Kahana bothers Howland, and the good doctor's very presence soon ignites fireworks of racial and sexual taboos across Hawaii's spectacular tropical landscape.
That description is enough to hook me but France Nuyen was beautiful back in the day.
Another film I want to call out is the documentary Patsy Mink: Ahead of the Majority. Most people have probably never heard of Patsy Mink but I grew up in Hawaii and during that time, she was the my US Representative. I remember seeing Mink campaign posters.
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Another (non-SFIAAFF) film that I'm looking forward to is Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. That's not a typo but the headline in the Harvard student newspaper after the historic 1968 football game (known as The Game). Actor Tommy Lee Jones played for Harvard and Yale QB Brian Dowling was the inspiration for the character BD in Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury.
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