One normally doesn't associate Chinatown with fresh air, but such are the winds swirling around the Hotel Street hangout NextDoor this week as the Island Independent Film Festival gets set to kick off another round of perspective-bending festivities.

Formerly known as Cinema Paradise (the organization that puts on the festival still retains the name), IIFF will screen some 45 feature films, shorts, documentaries and music videos, tomorrow through Sunday, in the comfy red-brick confines of NextDoor. IIFF director and programmer Chris Kahunahana, who also founded the Hawai'i Underground Film Festival, has assembled an impressive collection of indie offerings that challenge mainstream assumptions. Kahunahana is steering this year's festival sans longtime co-conspirator Sergio Goes, who is pursuing other projects.

After a 5 p.m. reception, the festival opens at 6 p.m. tomorrow with Gabriel Range's "Death of a President," which was blacklisted from major theater chains nationwide because of a controversial scene depicting the assassination of President Bush. IIFF is the first American film festival to screen the movie.

Other films include "Gitmo: The New Rules of War," a Swedish film that reflects on the debate over international law and human rights now symbolized by the U.S. Guantanamo Bay detention center for terror suspects; "The Great Happiness Space: A Tale of an Osaka Love Thief," a look inside the Japanese adult-entertainment industry.

Centerpiece film "Next: A Primer on Urban Painting" (7 p.m. Friday) is a documentary that examines the history and culture of street art and, Kahunahana says, just may offer a fresh perspective on the local graffiti-as-crime debate.

"The films in this festival are pretty hard-hitting," Kahunahana says. "They definitely challenge people. That's the whole thing: We want to challenge our viewers and ask those hard questions.

"You can't just use cinema to reinforce your beliefs," he says. "You have to use the image as a means of critical reflection."

IIFF is also serving as the official venue of the Showdown in Chinatown championships.

For the past 14 months, amateur and professional filmmakers from around the state have competed in monthly 24-hour film contests at thirtyninehotel and NextDoor. Last week, the winners from those competitions received their final assignment and were given a luxurious week (versus the usual 24 hours) to produce a film based on a common theme. On Saturday, the filmmakers will screen their entries to determine a champion.

Further proof of IIFF's independent approach can be seen in its first-ever festival award, a lifetime achievement recognition for local filmmaker George Tahara. "In any other country, if you made 200-plus films, you'd be a household name," Kahunahana says. "But (Tahara) is not, and he should be. He's a legendary filmmaker."

At 7 p.m. tomorrow, the festival will screen Tahara's acclaimed "Hawaiian Legends" film series, based on tales researched and recorded by one of King David Kalakaua's retainers and told directly to Tahara in the 1930s.

At 6 p.m. Sunday, the festival offers a retrospective of some of Tahara's other works, including the gritty "Street Kids," an unnarrated documentary about local youths living and dying in Honolulu's Chinatown.

The fifth annual Youth Media Workshop takes place on Saturday, noon to 5 p.m., with Time Warner Oceanic Cable creative director Jon Brekke working with local middle-school and high-school students to produce a film to be premiered before the main feature that evening. (To register, call 953-0002.)

The festival concludes with "Refugee All Stars," about a group of African refugees who flee the violence of Sierra Leone for Guinea and overcome unspeakable tragedy through music, creating an international buzz in the process.

Perhaps taking a cue from the recent run of mini-masterpiece trailers produced for the Hawaii International Film Festival, Kahunahana, a skilled filmmaker in his own right, collaborated with Showdown in Chinatown founder Tory Tukuafu, graphic designer Joseph Paahana, and the Kaimuki design firm Airspace Workshop to create this year's surreal, visually entrancing trailer.

The trailer, produced by Hawaii Media Inc., will be scored live at each showing by different musical acts, including Makana, Quadraphonix, Jerome James and others.

Reach Michael Tsai at mtsai@honoluluadvertiser.com.