John Williams' Firefly Dreams was the winner of the First Hawaiian Bank Golden Maile award for the main competition of the Hawaii International Film Festiva (Nov 2-11).

Shot on location in Japan and starring Maho Ukai and Yoshi Minami, the film is the British-born Williams' first feature. Among other entries in the six-film feature section were the opening film, David Cunningham's WWII prisoner-of-war drama To End All Wars, as well as The Fast Runner, Bungee Jumping Of Their Own, Millenium Mambo and Season Of Guavas.

The Golden Maile for Best Documentary went to Geroge Butler's The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition.

Among other prizes given at the festival's 21st edition were the Blockbuster Video Audience Award for Best Feature to Xiaoning Feng's Purple Sunset and Best Short to Lane Nishikawa's Forgotten Valour. The NETPAC award for best Asian film by a new director was presented to Jiang Wen's Devils On The Doorstep.

Aaron Yamasato's Blood Of The Samurai won the Aloha Airline Best Hawaiian Film award. Meanwhile, Caleb Deschanel was honoured with the Eastman Kodak Award for Excellence in Cinematography.

The closing film was The Hired Hand, a 1971 Western directed by and starring Peter Fonda. Though invited to present the film, Fonda cancelled at the last moment. Among other no shows was Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who was to be on the Golden Maile jury together with Diane Baker, Emily Liu, Edward Guthmann and Bey Logan.