Native American Films in NYC

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Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 29 March 2011 05:00

Written by L E Shannon

The Native American Film + Video Festival is running March 31 - April 3, 2011 at the the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the George Gustav Heye Center, near the southernmost end of Manhattan, New York.

Now in its 15th year, the Festival is held at the New York City branch of the Museum with some 100 films, including outstanding feature films, short fictions, documentaries, animations and youth works from throughout the Americas. Screenings take place each evening and on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons.

The opening film is the New York premiere of Qapirangajuq: Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change by renowned Nunavut-based director Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) and Winnipeg researcher and filmmaker Dr. Ian Mauro (Seeds of Change). Inuit Knowledge teams the filmmakers with Inuit elders and hunters to uncover the social and ecological impacts of a warming Arctic.

Screening on Thursday, Mar. 31, the film will also be simultaneously streamed on the Internet courtesy of Isuma TV, an independent network of Native and Inuit media, at www.isuma.tv.

Dr. Mauro will be in attendance for the screening and Zach Kunuk will be available via Skype. Both filmmakers will be available to answer questions from audiences worldwide via Twitter.

World Premiere screening:

Apache 8
Dir. Sande Zeig
This documentary is about the first all-female wildland firefighting crew, comprised entirely of White Mountain Apache women of Arizona, which has been fighting fires in Arizona and throughout the U.S. for over 22 years. The film delves into the heroic lives of these firefighters, as well as examines the challenges of being a firefighter on the reservation. The Sunday afternoon program is being presented in association with New York Women in Film and Television (NYWIFT).

Other featured works include:

Reel Injun
Dir. Neil Diamond (Cree)
This documentary exposes Hollywood's images of the "injun" and its implications, and hears from several directors, writers, actors and activists about the way things are headed now for indigenous peoples in cinema.

Tonto Plays Himself
Dir. Jacob Floyd (Creek/Cherokee)
"A young man who lives for the movies -- all except Westerns -- discovers he has a personal connection to them through his cousin, an actor during the 1930s, '40s, and early '50s."

Kissed by Lightning
Dir. Shelley Niro (Mohawk)
A contemporary story based on a traditional tale. A Six Nations Mohawk artist who grieves for her lost husband immerses herself in painting. Unexpectedly, an upcoming art exhibition forces her to consider the possibilities of the here and now.

Y el Rio Sigue Corriendo / And the River Flows On
Dir. Carlos Efraín Pérez Rojas (Mixe)
This award-winning film from Mexico is an account of the communities threatened by the La Parota hydroelectric dam, which would flood several communities south of Acapulco.

On Friday, April 1, the day-long symposium, Mother Earth in Crisis, features award-winning films on Native perspectives about the fate of the earth and its rivers throughout the hemisphere. The program includes discussion with the filmmakers following each screening and a panel with environmental and indigenous organizations.

Moderated by Tonya Gonnella Frichner, of the American Indian Law Alliance. Co-presented with Amazon Watch, International Rivers and Rainforest Foundation.

The 15th Native American Film + Video Festival is a production of the National Museum of the American Indian’s Film and Video Center.

All programs are free to the public. Reservations are recommended for evening programs.

For more information, go to www.nativenetworks.si.edu.

The Native American Film + Video Festival
March 31 - April 3, 2011

Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian
George Gustav Heye Center
One Bowling Green
New York City

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