Animated News reporter Christian Ziebarth happened to be in Hawaii for the Maui Film Festival recently and has written about his experiences:

After having not had a proper vacation in years I decided it was time to take one so I recently booked a trip to the island of Maui. After booking the vacation I later found out I would be there the exact dates that the Maui Film Festival would be taking place so I decided to take advantage of it and gather all the animation related bits I could, which turned out to be not very much but a little bit.

On Thursday, June 16, a day before its wide release in North America, Howl’s Moving Castle was shown at the Maui Arts and Cultural Center and was well attended and well received. While it wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the program several films at the festival were preceded by the Angry Alien Productions Flash-animated cartoons of bunnies re-enacting famous movies in 30 seconds. I saw their version of It’s a Wonderful Life once and Titanic twice and they always got a positive reaction from the audience. Just goes to show that Flash-animated cartoons that start out on the Internet can work their way up to appearances in big film festivals. UPDATE: I didn’t know it until I got back but Jennifer Shiman, creator of the bunny parodies, was presented with a Starz Ion Award at the festival. See report at Animation World Network
I also found out while there that famed marine life painter Wyland has completed some paintings in collaboration with Disney, featuring Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy.

Loosely animation related: These ‘keiki’ (children) are performing a hula to “He Mele no Lilo,” the song that plays over the opening credits of Disney’s Lilo and Stitch

The film festival hosted a sand sculpture contest on its last day and one of the contestants shows they are looking forward to December’s release of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe

Wyland’s Disney collaboration