Aspiring Honolulu filmmaker Ciara Leina‘ala Lacy never met the late Maori filmmaker Merata Mita, but the two are kindred spirits: female champions of indigenous voices.

The 35-year-old Lacy is working on her first documentary, “Out of State,” which explores the lives of Native Hawaiian inmates in the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Ariz. Mita, who died unexpectedly in 2010, was often praised for the unflinching way her films looked at the treatment of indigenous people.

Last week the Sundance Institute’s Native American and Indigenous Film Program honored both women in the same breath, naming Lacy as the first recipient of the Merata Mita Fellowship. The honor comes with a $10,000 grant, mentoring for a year and the invaluable contacts Sundance brings.

But their connection is deeper.

Mita had worked hard to support emerging talent. She served as an adviser to and artistic director of the Sundance Institute NativeLab and taught at the University of Hawaii’s Academy for Creative Media, where she created classes that focused on indigenous filmmaking.

Mita was best known for political documentaries. Her film “Bastion Point: Day 507” focused on Maoris being evicted from tribal land, and “Patu!” followed the violent clashes between anti-apartheid protesters and police during the 1981 tour of a South African rugby team. When she died in Auckland, New Zealand, at the age of 67, she was described as a fearless advocate of indigenous filmmaking.

“She was the mother of our indigenous film program,” said filmmaker Joel Moffatt, an associate professor at ACM. “She was one of the foremost authorities in indigenous cinema. She was a beloved member of ACM and the Hawaii filmmaking community.”

Lacy, a Kamehameha Schools and Yale graduate, said she is a beneficiary of that.

“The opportunity I have today is because of the work she did,” said Lacy, who was flown to the festival last week in Park City, Utah, for the grant announcement. “She did a lot of community building early on. She advocated for native voices and advocated for female native voices.”

Female filmmakers often work in a kind of isolation, according to Lacy. More than once she’s found herself the only woman in a room full of filmmakers.

Still, strength can be found in that.

“I like to think of my gender as my superpower, and I like to think of where I come from and who I am as something I can use as a power,” Lacy said. “But at the same time, there aren’t that many female filmmakers that I have had the opportunity to meet locally. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It means there needs to be more community building.”

Lacy started her career working in New York and Los Angeles. For a decade she worked as a producer, writer and production supervisor on rock documentaries, music videos and nonfiction TV projects that aired on PBS, ABC, Discovery, Bravo and A&E.

She came back to Hawaii in 2011 and has paid the bills by getting product placement deals with films. When an auntie told her about the Hawaii inmates practicing their native culture in Arizona, Lacy felt the spark of inspiration.

Lacy wound up on the Sundance radar in 2011 through previous fellowships that helped nurture early stages of “Out of State.” The Mita fellowship will help fund the editing phase of the final cut, which she hopes to finish by the end of the year.

“I think the support we have gotten has been vital for us to be able to do this,” Lacy said. “I think this is part of a bigger community-building that is happening, the effort to normalize who we see on screen and the way these stories are told and who is telling them.”

AND that’s a wrap …

Mike Gordon is the Star-Advertiser’s film and television writer. Read his Outtakes Online blog at honolulupulse.com. Reach him at 529-4803 or email mgordon@staradvertiser.com.