Indigenous Film & Arts Festival Filmography
2003 - 2008
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Aboriginal Architecture Living Architecture
Paul M. Rickard, Director (2006, 65 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). Featuring expert commentary and stunning imagery, Aboriginal Architecture Living Architecture provides a virtual tour of seven Aboriginal communities - Pueblo, Mohawk, Inuit, Crow, Navajo, Coast Salish and Haida - revealing how each is actively reinterpreting and adapting traditional forms for contemporary purposes. |
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Alone and Together This film explores the loss of a loved one through the eyes of a young man as he remembers his sister who died at an early age. An original script by Aaron and Derek Jones based on a book by Sherman Alexie. (Longhouse Media/Native Lens, 2008, 4 min.). |
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| American Aloha: Hula Beyond Hawai'i American Aloha explores the renaissance of Hawaiian culture through music, language and dance as it continues to grow in California. Following three kumu hula, or master hula teachers, the film celebrates the perpetuation of a culture, from the very traditional to the contemporary, as it evolves on distant shores. With more Native Hawaiians living on the US mainland than on the islands, the hula is a living tradition that connects generations far from home to their heritage. Revealing the challenges of cultural survival through the struggles of Hawai'i's past, American Aloha is a proud reminder of the power of reclaiming tradition for communities creating a home away from home. |
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Andrea Menard Music Video With singer/actress Andrea Menard, as their subject, the students from Native Lens combined live footage of Ms. Menard's 2007 Film Festival concert with their creative impressions of the actress. |
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| Asveq (The Walrus Hunt) The story of eight Yup'ik and Inupiaq high school youth as they create a traditional dance through the After School Program at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. The film includes a performance of Asveq, a song and dance written by Stephen Blanchett fusing Inupiaq melody and dancing styles with Yup'ik lyrics. |
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Beyond Boundaries, An Artist Exchange Six Native artists from Hawai’i, Alaska and Massachusetts gather to share techniques and styles. Travel with them beyond boundaries in their unique exchange of art and creativity. |
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| Black Indians: An American Story This documentary explores the issue of racial identity among Native and African Americans, examining the coalescence of these two groups in American history. Narrated by James Earl Jones. |
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Bunky Echo-Hawk: A Profile. In this profile piece, Bunky Echo-Hawk shares his thoughts on the role of art and the artist. Bunky was the featured artist at the 2007 Indigenous Film & Arts Festival. His work appears in Future Warrior, a 2008 Festival selection. |
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| Christmas at Wapos Bay Christmas at Wapos Bay begins a few days before Christmas as three Native children visit their Moshum (grandfather) at his trap-line cabin. There they experience the traditional ways of fishing, hunting and trapping. On the trap line Moshum becomes concerned about the lack of animals in the area. The family Christmas gathering may have to be cancelled if there is not enough food to feed everyone who will be arriving. Cree filmmaker Dennis Jackson's first long-form, stop-motion animation explores the spirit of a native way of life in Northern Saskatchewan |
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Double Trouble Are Kyanna from the Central Australian bush, and Yuma raised in Sydney, really long lost twins? When they trade places to find out, they get more than they bargained for. This delightful series made for Australian children's television adds a cross-cultural dimension to the “lost twin” story, exploring Aboriginal culture, and contrasting traditional ways of life with modern day thinking. One of thirteen episodes. A U.S. premiere. |
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| The Elements of Ice Honey Dawn Karima Pettigrew, Director Wadulisi, Inc., (2007, 3 min.) Official Selection, Fifth Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2008). Video portraits of indigenous people blend with Pettigrew's vocals and the music of Cherokee flutist Wildcat. A Colorado premiere. |
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| The Exiles Kent Mackenzie, Director Milestone Film & Video, (2008, 72 min.) Official Selection, Fifth Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2008). The Exiles chronicles one night in the lives of young Native American men and women living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. The film follows a group of exiles— transplants from Southwest reservations—as they flirt, drink, party, fight, and dance. Mackenzie earned the confidence of these Individuals who finally agreed to re-enact scenes from their lives for this picture. All of the actors play themselves. The Exiles premiered in 1961. Although not a commercial success, Native American writers and activists have long considered it one of the first works of art to portray modern life honestly and as an important forerunner for the cultural renaissance of American Indian fiction, poetry, filmmaking and theater starting in the 1970s. Thom Andersen's 2003 compilation documentary Los Angeles Plays Itself kicked off the rediscovery and restoration of this lost masterwork. |
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| Father Coming Home As part of the Seattle International Film Festival, this short was created by youth filmmakers in just 36 hours. Based upon a script by Sherman Alexie written expressly for this filmmaking challenge, Father Coming Home addresses the complexities of tragedy and addiction with in a family. |
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| Finding My Talk From Paul M. Rickard, director of the acclaimed documentary series Finding our Talk: A Journey Into Aboriginal Languages comes Finding My Talk. Many Aboriginal languages have disappeared or are disappearing. Others are threatened. According to Statistics Canada, only 3 of 50 of the most prominent languages are expected to survive through the next century. The loss of language threatens the roots of family life and social structure in most aboriginal communities. Fortunately there are unique individuals and organizations across Canada who are using innovative strategies to maintain the basic functions of their languages, and to preserve their creative and cognitive spirit itself. |
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| Fifteen This youth produced short explores the effects of peer and family pressure on the issue of underage drinking. |
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Future Warrior This impressive first film by Francis and Long Soldier presents an intriguing sci-fi interpretation of “contact” in a future world where memories are chemically suppressed and the government has imprisoned the last traditional medicine man, hoping to prevent him from passing on his medicine and powers. (2007, 30 min.) |
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| Gulpilil: One Red Blood |
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| Hands of History |
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| Heart of the Sea |
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| Hg and Me |
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History of the Inupiat 1961: The Duck-In |
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| Höküle'a – Guiding Star |
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Indigenes (Days of Glory) |
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| Kanyini Melanie Hogan, Director (2006, 53 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). Bob Randall speaks about Kanyini – the interconnectedness of belief system, spirituality, land and family among Aboriginal people - and the devastating impact of White settlement on those four pillars of traditional aboriginal society. |
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| Ke Kulana He Mahu |
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| Kerosene Creek Michael Bennett, Director (2005, 13 min.) Official Selection, Second Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2005). Director Michael Bennett uses this dramatization to explore one of the most significant foundations of Maori custom, the tangi rites of tribute and farewell to the Dead. |
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| Kinnaq Nigaqtuqtuaq (The Snaring Madman) Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, Director (13 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). A crazed and hungry Inuit cannibal hunts a young woman through the streets of downtown Manhattan, as she, in turn stalks her estranged lover in this darkly funny and unsettling short.
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Kokum Déménage (Kokum on the Move) |
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| Kunuk Family Reunion Zacharias Kunuk, Director (48 min.) Official Selection, First Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2004). A one-hour documentary by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, filmmakers of the 2001 Cannes Festival award-winner, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. Zacharias Kunuk was born in 1957 in a sod house on the arctic tundra. Zach's parents, Enuki and Vivi, now in their seventies, still live on the land most of the year, following the same nomadic lifestyle of hunting and fishing that four millennia of their ancestors followed before them. Kunuk Family Reunion follows Zach and his family as they gather in June 2003, after the whirlwind success of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, at their traditional home site 70 kilometers into the arctic wilderness from the tiny town of Igloolik. Here, at the birthplace of his father, and the graves of his grandparents, Zach and his brothers and sisters honor their family history with seal hunting and storytelling. As the older people tell their stories we see the land and its people bound together, in life and in death. |
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Le Lac Abitibi (Lake Abitibi) |
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| Living from the Land and Sea |
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| The Makah Nation: A Whaling People (2002, 19 min.) Official Selection, Second Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2005). One of the Makah's oldest stories tells how Thunderbird saved the tribe from starvation by providing a whale to eat. By 1920, commercial whaling had driven gray whale populations nearly extinct. The Makah voluntarily stopped whaling more than 30 years before the U.S. and other countries began to regulate commercial whaling through the International Whaling Commission. Gray whale populations have since rebounded to historic high levels. In 1999 the Makah harvested their first gray whale in more than 70 years, reviving the Makah whaling tradition and renewing the tribe's culture. |
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| Making Our Way: Suquamish Song and Dance Swinomish Indian Tribal Community; Longhouse Media/Native Lens Project Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). |
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Making the River |
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| The Maori Merchant of Venice (Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti) Official Selection, Second Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2005). In 1945, Dr Pei Te Hurinui Jones translated William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice into te reo, wanting to make the beauty of Shakespeare's language and stories accessible to Maori. Adapted for film by renowned Shakespearean actor and director Don C. Selwyn, the film is New Zealand 's first Maori language feature film with English subtitles. The Merchant of Venice is a tale of revenge driven by long-running racial and religious tension, themes familiar to Maori throughout the European colonization of New Zealand. Yet this is not meant to parallel Maori history directly. The design, costumes, setting and music of the film interweave Shakespearean elements with Maori arts, while ensuring the 17th Century Venetian costumes remain true to Shakespeare's original play. |
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| Mparntwe Sacred Sites Danielle MacLean, Director (2004, 23 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). This documentary explores the struggles of the Central Australia's Arrente people to maintain their sacred sites and stop the expansion of Alice Springs from swallowing them up. |
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Na Kamalei: The Men of Hula Beyond the deep-rooted stereotypes of “grass skirt girls,” Na Kamalei: Men of Hula explores the revival of men who dance the hula. This documentary follows legendary kumu hula Robert Cazimero and Halau Na Kamalei, the only all-male hula school in Hawai'i, as they journey to compete at the world’s largest hula competition. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of their school and competing with some of the oldest male dancers at the competition, Robert and his men are out to prove that the renaissance of male hula is not over. Once forced underground by missionaries and businessmen, hula is enjoying a renaissance in the islands. Na Kamalei tells a story of Hawaiian pride through the exploration of male roles in the hula tradition. (2007, 60 min.) |
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| Natchiliag'niaqtuguk Aapagalu (Seal Hunting with Dad) Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, Director (2004, 11 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). Carl Kippi teaches his son Jordan to hunt seal in remote Alaska in this subtle but poignant short documentary that showed at Sundance earlier this year. |
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| Newen JAAS is a Chilean hip hop artist in search of her Mapuche roots in a country which has a tradition of negating its indigenous heritage. Over the years she has sought out and learned much about the history and language of her people. In this music video, shot on Mapuche land in the South of Chile, JAAS raps in both Spanish and Mapudungun. Newen (life-force) is a call to the ancestors to awaken the enduring strength within the Mapuche people, as they continue in the struggle to maintain their land and cultural identity. (2005, 4 min.). |
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| Nineteen The portrait of a young teen as he tells his friends he has enlisted in the military. Created by student filmmakers of the Swinomish Tribe through the Native Lens Program. |
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| The Old Man and the Inland Sea Warwick Thornton, Director (2005, 22 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). A moving and atmospheric documentary that gives us a unique Aboriginal perspective on the benefits of work and the dangers of alcohol and greed through the eyes of one old noodler. |  |
Our Spirits Don't Speak English: Indian Boarding School Imagine you are a child taken from your home, your family, everything you know. This searing documentary presents a Native American perspective on Indian boarding schools, uncovering the dark history of U.S. government policy that took Indian children from their homes, forced them into boarding schools and educated them in the ways of Western Society. This film gives voice to the countless Indian children forced through a system designed to strip them of their Indian culture, heritage and traditions. (Rich-Heape Films, Inc. 2008, 80 min.) |
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The Peyote Man This documentary profiles Anthony Davis, a 91-year old Pawnee Indian who was a leader in the Native American Church for more than 40 years and widely known and respected for his greatly detailed, traditional fans. |
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Qayaqs & Canoes: Native Ways of Knowing Qayaqs & Canoes documents native master craftsmen of Alaska build eight traditional kayaks and canoes using all-but-forgotten techniques. The film presents an intimate portrait that links legend, history and personal experiences of the master boat builders in the process of passing on their traditional knowledge. |
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| The Rabbit's Tail A claymation rendition of a traditional tribal story about how Rabbit lost his tail, made by Muscogee Creek students at the Morris High School in Morris, Oklahoma. In Muscogee Creek with English subtitles. |
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Radio Chanul Pom: From the Heart of the Highlands of Chiapas Through this indigenous, community-based radio station in the mountains of Chiapas, Civil Society Las Abejas fights for justice and defends its language and cultural identity, broadcasting in the Tzeltal and Tzotzil languages. (Civil Society Las Abejas, 2005, 19 min.) |
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| Recuento: Homecoming No treatment of El Dia de los Muertos without a story. In Mexican and Mexican-American cultures this is often a recuento - a story that has been told and retold many times and passed on from one generation to the next. In this case, this was a story told to Maruca G. Salazar by her aunt to illuminate the meaning of El Dia de los Muertos. |
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Re-encuentros: Entre la memoria y la nostalgia (Re-encounters) When Alejandro Santiago returned to his Zapotec village after a decade abroad, he found abandoned houses, empty streets and deserted farm fields. His sense of emptiness inspired him to create 2501 Migrants a symbolic community of life-size clay sculptures in homage to those who left. (Petate Productions, 2008, 110 min.) |
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| The Salt Song Trail: Bringing Creation Back Together The Salt Song Trail Bringing Creation Back Together, tells the story of the sacred Salt Songs (Asi Huviav Puruakain) of the Southern Paiute (Nuwuvi) people. The songs are used in memorial ceremonies, for cultural revitalization and as a spiritual bond for the Southern Paiute people living in the Southwest. Through the beautiful landscape of the Colorado Plateau, painted deserts and river valleys, the Salt Song Trail traces the journeys of ancestral peoples to historic and sacred sites. |
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| Searching A young man learns to find peace from the crazy chaotic world he lives in. |
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Sueños Binacionales/Bi-National Dreams This documentary recounts the bi-national experience of indigenous immigrants from Oaxaca, Mexico. It tells the stories of the Mixtec people, immigrating to California for more than three decades, and the more recent stories of the Chatinos immigrating to North Carolina for the past ten years. (Petate Productions, 2005, 30 min.) |
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Te Whare (The House) This parable explores the relationship of Tangata Whenua (people of the land - Maori) and Europeans who signed The Treaty of Waitangi in 1840 confirming Maori Tino Rangatiratanga (Sovereignty) and Crown Governance. Te Whare sees Hone opening his home to his friend Richard who has just broken up with his girlfriend and need a place to stay. Initially the relationship is positive, but slowly Richard invites his own friends to come to the house and by film's end Hone finds himself on the couch - a guest in his own home. The film parallels the experience of Maori and many other indigenous peoples who have experienced the devastation of colonization. |
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| A Thousand Roads A Thousand Roads is a fictional work, produced by NMAI to explore the human context of the NMAI's collections. The film is striking visually, and presents through its beauty and its stories an imaginative entry into knowing about Native people living in the vast indigenous geography that comprises the Americas. Rather than presenting a conventional historical perspective, the film is composed of short contemporary fictions about individuals, grounding them in emotional truths to which an audience can easily relate. |
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Tnorala See the world through Aboriginal eyes as this magical combination of storytelling and cinematography transports you to the amazing vistas of Tnorala, Australia. Storyteller Mavis Malbunka takes you on a journey through time as she describes the relationship of her people to the ancestors, to the land, to intruders, and their approach to modern day tourism that may be the key to preserving Tnorala for future generations. (2008, 22 min.) |
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The Tracker
Rolf De Heer, Director (2002, 95 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). In the mountainous country of Southern Australia in 1922, aboriginal tracker (David Gulpilil) is conscripted to find a fugitive on the run. Guiding a party of three white policemen, The Tracker leads them farther into the wilderness and the journey grows increasingly difficult. The Tracker's intimate knowledge of the land is not just dramatic interpretation – actor David Gulpilil actually possesses all the traditional knowledge his character uses. Set against the backdrop of the harsh Australian landscape, an even harsher reality of racial prejudice and violence unfolds. |
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| The Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy
Chip Richie, Director (2006, 94 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). This two-hour documentary explores America's darkest period: President Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the forced removal of the Cherokee Nation to Oklahoma in 1838. Thousands of Cherokees died during the Trail of Tears, nearly a quarter of the Nation. They suffered beyond imagination and when they finally arrived in Indian Territory, they arrived almost without any children and with very few elders. |
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Turangawaewae: A Place to Stand Writer Wiremu Grace transports the story of his grandfather's World War II experience to the present. A Maori veteran of the Vietnam War is haunted by memories of violence, death, and destruction. Turangawaewae, that place to stand, and whanau (family), provide Tiare, played by Wi Kuki Kaa, the firm base from which his healing can begin. |
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| Turangawaewae . . . a place to stand This documentary follows Susannah as she travels to her marae for the first time, reconciling her Maori and Pakeha heritage. |
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| Two Cars, One Night The story of first love when two children develop a relationship as they wait for their parents in the car park of a rural pub. Two Cars, One Night was a 2004 Academy Award nominee directed by Taika Waititi and produced by Ainsley Gardiner. |
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| Utu The New Zealand land wars of the 1800s pitted Maori against the British, colonials and their Maori allies. Te Wheke, a Shakespeare-quoting warrior, is a corporal in the militia until the massacre of his family. Seeking utu (retributive justice), he turns violently and effectively against his former allies. Banded together to hunt down Te Wheke are the bilingual and bicultural pakeha settler Williamson who also seeks utu after Te Wheke's attack on his homestead leads to his wife's death; Lt. Scott, a “colonial” fresh from the Boer Wars whose loyalties to the Crown and to New Zealand are not necessarily the same; Col. Eliot, the British army commander; and Wiremu, the Maori militia sergeant who while grounded in the past does what is necessary to bring about a future, not ideal for Maori, but under the circumstances, perhaps the best available to both Maori and pakeha. |
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The Velvet Devil The year is 1945. The glamorous singing sensation known as The Velvet Devil is performing on-stage at the legendary Hippodrome in Toronto. but in the middle of her signature tune, strange things begin to happen – a premonition, a telegram, sad and terrible news…Soon Velvet is on a train home, back to the Canadian prairies she fled so long ago, for her mother's funeral. We travel with Velvet as she journeys through her troubled past and comes to embrace her Métis heritage that she once rejected. Featuring actor, writer & singing sensation Andrea Menard, appearing in person. |
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Weewar
Glen Stasiuk, Director (2006, 8 min.) Official Selection, Third Annual Indigenous Film & Arts Festival (2006). The story of a Nyungar warrior judged by English Law for a ‘payback' delivered to another Aboriginal person under traditional law. In memory of the many Aboriginal people who died in exile on Rottnest Island prison, never to see their homeland again. |
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Whale Rider Whale Rider presents the story of a Maori girl who challenges her grandfather and over a thousand years of tradition to fulfill her destiny as leader of her tribe – a role traditionally reserved for men. |
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What Images of Colorado provide a backdrop for a message of hope for the younger generation. Produced at the 2007 IFAF 24-Hour Fly Filmmaking Workshop (Wapikoni Mobile, 2007, 3 min.) |
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When the Season is Good: Artists of Arctic Alaska An ivory carver, a skin sewer, a sculptor, a painter...'When the Season is Good' depicts the lives and art of four contemporary Alaska Native artists from the Bering Sea and Arctic region. Through their personal stories, the film explores the juncture of art, culture, economics, and survival in some of the most remote places in the world where long-held cultural traditions and a lifestyle of hunting, fishing and gathering exist alongside everyday modern life. |
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The Winter Chill Based on an experience of the director's grandfather, this drama follows a man on his father's trapline who runs headlong into the legendary Cree being, Pakaaskokan. At first terrified, he is shocked to learn that there was far more in his father's stories than he ever dared to realize. |
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