Exploring elements of Native female identity, we ask, How does art influence children? How do romantic images of Indians enchant Native and non-Native people, young and old?

Conversion

(2006, 8 min.) Director: Nanobah Becker (Navajo)

In a remote corner of the Navajo Nation, circa 1950, a visit by Christian missionaries has catastrophic consequences for a family. In Navajo with English subtitles.

Disney’s Pocahontas

(1995, 84 min.) Directors: Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg

Free-spirited Pocahontas lives a carefree life with her animal friends Meeko and Flit and the companionship of her loving Grandmother Willow. When English settlers arrive on the shores of Pocahontas's village, a chance encounter with Captain John Smith begins a friendship that changes both cultures forever.

Moderated discussion led by Pat Aufderheide with filmmaker Nanobah Becker and National Museum of the American Indian research historian Gabrielle Tayac (Piscataway) to follow the screening.

National issues of sovereignty and cultural acceptance often affect Native people on a personal level. Many individuals must search for life’s greatest moments—marriage, children, etc.—within the confines of blood quantum. This government-mandated system, which defines citizenship by how much “Indian blood” someone has, leads many Native people to question their cultural worth, asking, Is my identity in my blood?

Club Native

(2008, 78 min.) Director: Tracey Deer (Mohawk)

On the Mohawk Kahnawake Reserve there are two very firm but unwritten rules: don’t marry a white man and don’t have a child with a white man. Doing so means losing all standing as a Native person, for you and your children. Documentarian Tracey Deer follows four women from Kahnawake as they battle the pressures of life, love, and community to protect their status as tribal members, as well as the rights of their spouses and children to live on tribal lands.

Moderated discussion led by Gabrielle Tayac with filmmaker Tracey Deer to follow the screening.

Tkaronto

(2007, 102 min.) Director: Shane Belcourt (Métis)

Amidst the cityscape of Tkaronto (the original Mohawk word for Toronto), Ray and Jolene, two Native thirty-somethings, make an unexpected, life-changing connection. As they wander through bittersweet experiences of contemporary Native life, they find solace in each other’s struggle for a sense of cultural self.

Moderated discussion led by producer Christine Vachon with filmmaker Shane Belcourt to
follow the screening.

A high-energy explosion of television magic that will make you think about Native Americans in a new way! Three Native artists—Ben-Alex Dupris (Colville), Terrance Houle (Blackfoot/Saulteaux), and Skeena Reece (Métis/Cree/ Tsimshian/Gitksan)—perform spoken word, song, and dance pieces inspired by their favorite “Indian” episodes of television. Many American TV shows have featured a special episode with an American Indian guest star or Native-inspired theme. Many of these shows are embraced by Native communities, despite their lack of accuracy or sensitivity toward Native culture. Reception with the artists to follow.

Proposed episodes for this program are:

Challenge of the SuperFriends: “The History of Doom” and “Doomsday” featuring Apache Chief
Director: Ray Patterson, presented by Ben-Alex Dupris

Seinfeld: “Cigar Store Indian”
Director: Tom Cherones, presented by Terrance Houle

Moesha: “Road Trip”
Director: Henry Chan, presented by Skeena Reece

We are proud to present the newest films from some of the best Native American filmmakers working today.

The Colony

(2007, 23 min.) Director: Jeff Barnaby (Mi’gMaq)

Maytag, a Mi’gMaq man displaced from the reserve, latches onto and falls in love with the only aboriginal woman he has met in the city. His descent into madness is exacerbated by his drug dealer and friend. In English and Mi’gMaq with English subtitles.

Nikamowin

(2007, 11 min.) Director: Kevin Lee Burton (Swampy Cree)

This experimental film ponders our indelible connection to language, transforming a Cree narrative into a landscape of sound and song. In English and Cree with English subtitles.

Sikumi (On the Ice)

(2007,15 min.) Director: Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (Iñupiaq)

An Inuit hunter inadvertently becomes a witness to murder, forcing him to navigate the frayed morality between honoring the memory of one friend and destroying the life of another. In Iñupiaq with English subtitles.

A Return Home

(2008, 31 min.) Director: Ramona Emerson (Navajo)

A powerful documentary about B. Emerson Kitsman, a contemporary painter who has returned to her childhood home in the Navajo Nation. As she begins a monumental project, Kitsman must also adjust to life on her reservation, spurring questions about what it means to be a Native artist.

4-Wheel War Pony

(2007, 5 min.) Director: Dustinn Craig (White Mountain Apache/Navajo)

The Apaches of the 1880s absorbed modernity, yet they managed to continue refining and retaining their way of life; so, too, do today’s White Mountain Apache skateboarders. 4-Wheel War Pony is a short film using skateboarding footage captured by members of the White Mountain Apache in an effort to document a culture in motion.

Moderated discussion led by curator Gerald McMaster (Plains Cree and member of the Siksika Nation) with the filmmakers to follow the films.

Curator Gerald McMaster takes a subversive and often humorous look at historical re-enactment. This presentation offers new insight into re-enactment—from its roots in American artist George Catlin’s European tour of Native performers and the famous Wild West shows to today’s young Native artists currently reinterpreting re-enactment as a means of artistic defiance.

The Double Entendre of RE-ENACTMENT was curated by Gerald McMaster, commissioned by the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival & Vtape, with a catalogue published by Vtape.

Works discussed include:

Shooting Geronimo

(2007, 11 min.) Director: Kent Monkman (Cree)

Set in a ghost town in the old west, two buff young Cree men derail the contrivances of 19th-century filmmaker Frederick Curtis.

The Last Great Hunt

(2006, 6 min.) Director: Shonie De La Rosa (Navajo)

This comedic short presents a series of stereotypes culled from cinematic depictions of Native North Americans. “Mr. Indigenous” stalks all manner of prey, from bunny rabbits to “cowboys,” parodying tropes of the Native as noble-warrior-at-one-with-nature.

Nanook of the North

(1922, 5-min. excerpt) Director: Robert Joseph Flaherty

Cited as the first film of the documentary genre, Nanook of the North “documents” a year in the life of an Inuit hunter Nanook and his family. Using text panels and lively music (the film is silent), Flaherty presents a glimpse into daily “pre-contact” life in the Arctic: trading, hunting, fishing, sledding, and igloo building.

In the Land of the War Canoes

(1972, 5-min. excerpt) Director: Edward Sheriff Curtis

Originally titled In the Land of the Head-Hunters, Edward Curtis’s film strives to recreate the way of life of the Kwakiutl peoples of Vancouver Island prior to contact. Massive war canoes, totem poles, and elaborate costumes animate a story that contains all of the elements of a Hollywood movie: unrequited love, betrayal, revenge, and battle.

The Shadow Catcher

(1974, 5-min. excerpt) Director: Teri C. McLuhan

The Shadow Catcher retraces photographer Edward Curtis’s journeys from the pueblo regions of the Southwest, north to British Columbia and Alaska, using re-creations of events from his source materials: unpublished journals, field notes, private letters, and all of Curtis’s recoverable film footage of the trip.

Nunavut

(1995, 28-min. excerpt) Director: Zacharias Kunuk (Inuit); Producer: Isuma Productions

Igloolik, Summer 1946. The distant sound of the atookatookatook, the first gas engine to arrive in Igloolik, brings a surprise visitor to Qaisut, island of the walrus hunters. The priest arrives to study Inuit life, to dig in the ancient ruins, and to see the hunt.

Winnetou

(1965, 5-min. excerpt) Director: Harald Reini

This is the first of sixteen film adaptations of Karl May’s popular German “wild west” novels. German survey engineer Old Shatterhand (Lex Barker) is saved from certain death by Apache warrior Winnetou (played by French film star Pierre Brice), and the two become blood brothers. While May often intimated that his life was the inspiration for his books, he never actually traveled to the American West. May has been immortalized in annual Karl May festivals held across Europe.

4-Wheel War Pony

(2007, 5 min.) Director: Dustinn Craig (White Mountain Apache/Navajo)

The Apaches of the 1880s absorbed modernity, yet they managed to continue refining and retaining their way of life; so, too, are today’s White Mountain Apache. 4-Wheel War Pony is a short film utilizing skateboarding footage captured by core members of the White Mountain Apache in an effort to document culture in motion.

Film descriptions courtesy of imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.

In 1972, America watched Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, the first Italian American film written and directed by Italian Americans. Today, people from diverse and specific backgrounds still relate with the epic story of the Corleone family. Themes such as cultural displacement, the realization of the American dream, and family allegiances resonate and parallel many issues Native Americans face today.

The Godfather

(1972, 175 min.) Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's bestseller about post-WWII rivalry among the New York Mafia's five families stands alone as both art and entertainment. Coppola's cinematic vision is in full flower, from the then-controversial casting of Marlon Brando and Al Pacino, to the deep hues of Gordon Willis's photography, to the moving score by Nino Rota. The film earned eleven Oscar nominations, with wins for Best Picture, Screenplay, and Actor for the iconic Brando.

Description courtesy of the American Film Institute.

Moderated discussion led by Hanay Geiogamah (Kiowa/Delaware) with filmmaker Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho) and the Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, Kevin Gover (Pawnee/Comanche), to follow the program.

We present the first feature film written, directed, and (co)produced by Native Americans to receive distribution in mainstream theaters.

Smoke Signals

(1998, 104 min.) Director: Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho)

An acclaimed independent film about a young Native man who embarks on a life-changing journey with his childhood friend to retrieve the body of his estranged father. Smoke Signals marked the directorial debut of Chris Eyre. The screenplay by Sherman Alexie (Spokane/Coeur d'Alene) is based on his short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven.

Moderated discussion led by Hanay Geiogamah with filmmaker Chris Eyre to follow the screening.