2011 Producer Profiles

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December 2011 Producer Profile: Bennie Klain
Columbus Day Legacy, the new documentary by Navajo filmmaker Bennie Klain, takes viewers to Denver, Colorado, where Christopher Columbus and the holiday honoring him are subjects of heated debate. Denver’s Italian Americans feel it is their right to honor Columbus, an Italian, and to celebrate his arrival to North America. The local American Indian Movement chapter is strongly opposed, and argue that Columbus should not be celebrated because of his acts of genocide on North America’s Indigenous population. Unwavering in their viewpoints, the disagreement goes public during the Italian Americans’ annual Columbus Day parade. In the film, Klain, unbiased in his filmmaking, captures the drama surrounding the 2007 parade from both sides of the conflict.
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November 2011 Producer Profile: Chris Bashinelli
Bridge the Gap to Pine Ridge, a new episode in the Bridge the Gap TV series, follows Chris Bashinelli as he drops in on the day-to-day lives of residents in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, to find out about life on Pine Ridge, their stories and how they see themselves in the larger context of the world. Bashinelli, the host and executive producer of Bridge the Gap TV, started the documentary series to expose people to locations around the world that often receive negative media attention. By presenting a positive perspective on places like Pine Ridge, Bridge the Gap TV aims to change the world for the better through intercultural communication and understanding.
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October 2011 Producer Profile: Charles Dye
Charles Dye is the director of the new documentary Indian Relay. Indian Relay is a style of bareback horse racing involving four to eight teams competing head-to-head. During a race, riders make three laps around the typically half-mile track, changing to a new horse at the beginning of each lap. Three other team members assist the rider by managing the horses before and after their lap. In the film Indian Relay, Dye follows multiple teams as they compete on the Indian Relay circuit at races around the American Rocky Mountains and high plains.
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September 2011 Producer Profile: Adrian Baker
Injunuity, the new documentary by Adrian Baker (Hopi), captures Native American stories and perspectives in a unique way--animation and real audio. In most animated productions, the characters, story and script are created simultaneously, Baker said. Injunuity is different. The documentary is made up of animated segments created around field recordings of Native American individuals discussing topics such as Native language preservation and education.
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August 2011 Producer Profile: Heather Rae
Cherokee filmmaker Heather Rae’s new feature documentary, First Circle, shares the stories of families in Idaho struggling with drug abuse, the foster care system and the intrinsic human need for family. First Circle incorporates multiple perspectives from law enforcement officers, foster home parents and family stories, including Rae’s family, to provide an expansive look at the foster care system and families dealing with drug addiction.
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July 2011 Producer Profile: Shelley Niro
Shelley Niro is an award-winning Mohawk photographer, painter, sculptor and filmmaker from Canada. In her debut feature film, Kissed by Lightning, a Mohawk woman works through the grief surrounding the death of her husband by painting the stories he used to tell. “It is really about the essence of being an Iroquois person,” said Niro, the Mohawk producer, writer and director of Kissed by Lightning. “I wanted to contemporize that story through a modern-day twist.”
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June 2011 Producer Profile: Christine Lesiak and Princella Parker
Standing Bear’s Footsteps, the new historical documentary by Christine Lesiak and Princella Parker (Omaha), tells the story of one of America’s original civil rights activists, Ponca Chief Standing Bear. “The film... is about what it means to be a person as told through the life of a Ponca Indian chief, and his struggle to be free,” said Lesiak. It is the first documentary to tell the story of Standing Bear’s life and activism work for Native American rights in America. The film presents his story though historical reenactments, photographs, film footage and interviews.
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May 2011 Producer Profile: Tom Curran
The Silence, a new documentary by Tom Curran, tells the decades old, untold story of what happened behind church doors in the remote Alaska village of St. Michael. Throughout the 1970s, Father George Endall and his deacon-in-training Joseph Lundowski molested much of the Yup’ik children living in St. Michael, a village on the remote southwest coast of Alaska. In the decades following the abuses, the Catholic Church denied the accusations of molestation from St. Michael, and other Native villages throughout Alaska. In The Silence, four victims, now-grown up, tell their stories from childhood, revealing the events that ravaged their lives and their families. Read the full story

April 2011 Producer Profile: Sande Zeig
Sande Zeig is the producer and director of the new documentary Apache 8. The film unveils the unique and untold history of Apache 8, an all-women wildland firefighting crew from the Fort Apache Indian Reservation in Arizona. Throughout the documentary, the lives of four Apache 8 crew members are woven into the film's narrative, revealing captivating stories from their lives both on and off the fire line. Read the full story

March 2011 Producer Profile: Jonathon Stanton
As a filmmaker out of Vancouver, Canada, Stanton infuses his passion for athleticism and the outdoors into his productions. His new documentary, Games of the North: Playing for Survival, is no exception. Games of the North showcases traditional Indigenous sports of the Arctic from the perspective of the athletes themselves. The sports incorporate survival skills necessary to inhabit the extreme Arctic environment. Read the full story

February 2011 Producer Profile: Diane Benson
Diane E. Benson (Tlingit) has pursued a multidimensional life that has included work as a playwright, writer, speaker, politician and actress. In the docudrama, For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow in Alaska, Benson plays the role of Tlingit activist Elizabeth Peratrovich--one of the most influential leaders of the Alaska Civil Rights Movement. Read the full story

January 2011 Producer Profile: Sam Hurst
Good Meat, a new film co-produced by Sam Hurst, captures a glimpse of the obesity epidemic faced by Native Americans today. “Forty percent of the Oglala Lakota people are already struggling with obesity, diabetes and heart disease,” says Hurst. Part of this statistic--and the star of Good Meat--is Beau LeBeau (Oglala Lakota). LeBeau is obese; members of his family are obese; his diabetic mother recently passed away. Good Meat, explains Hurst, “tries to tell the story of the most pressing epidemic facing Native American people today.” Read the full story