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<2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

Jack Kohler is a student of engineering at Stanford, an actor, and a filmmaker. He has played Tecumseh, Crazy Horse, and Captain Jack in outdoor theatrical productions, and Kohler played the lead role, a Yurok gillnetter, in Stephen Most's play Watershed. He has also acted in numerous films and television programs. Kohler edited a two-minute program, Karuk Creation Story drawing from River of Renewal footage, that was broadcast on PBS stations in November, 2002. He is associate producer of a television documentary program on Indian gaming, Beyond the Dream. Kohler currently works for the Auburn Rancheria training Indian youth in video production methods, and each summer he works with American Indian youth in making short features for the American Indian Film Festival.

Screening Date/Time

Producer, River of Renewal

Sunday, Nov. 1 at 3:10 p.m.

(Can't make this screening? Check the schedule for other screening times.)

Download the entire schedule

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

Older Than America (Saturday, Oct. 31, 7:20 p.m. and Wednesday, Nov. 4) has been cancelled.

Please watch an “old fashioned ghost story” in its place.

Imprint (88 minutes), Filmmakers: Michael Linn, Chris Eyre

 
Shayla Stonefeather, a Native American attorney prosecuting a Lakota teen in a controversial murder trial, returns to the reservation to say goodbye to her dying father. After the teen is killed, she hears ghostly voices and sees strange visions that cause her to re-examine beliefs she thought she left behind. Shot entirely in South Dakota, Imprint stars Tonantzin Carmelo, Carla-Rae Holland , Michael Spears, Tom Greyhorse, Cory Brusseau, Jonathan Freeman, and Charlie White Buffalo.

Screening Dates/Times
Saturday, Oct. 31 at 7:20 p.m.
Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 5 p.m. 

Download entire schedule here

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

(87 minutes), Filmmaker: Suzi Yoonessi

As sweet and colorful as a snow cone, this delightful happy-sad confection follows an awkward Alaskan teen as she discovers her Yup'ik heritage while rallying her fellow misfits to compete in her school's Snowstorm Survivor competition.

Outstanding Performance in Narrative Competition,

2009 LOS ANGELES FILM FESTIVAL – World Premiere 

Official Website: http://dearlemonlimamovie.com

Screening Dates/Times

Friday, Oct. 30 at 9 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 2 at 5 p.m.

Download entire schedule here

Watch the trailer 

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

 (56 minutes), Release Date: 2009, Filmmaker: Milt Lee

Following three young Lakota girls from the Pine Ridge Reservation as they form a tentative relationship with their incarcerated father through the exchange of video letters, filmmakers document the years that follow as each girl flowers into a beautiful young woman with a strong sense of identity and purpose.

Screening Dates/Times

Friday, Oct. 30 at 7 p.m. (Presenting Filmmaker)
Sunday, Nov. 1 at 5:10 (Shown with River of Renewal)
Thursday, Nov. 5 at 7:10 p.m. (Shown with River of Renewal)

Download entire schedule here

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2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

 (56 minutes), Release Date: 2009, Filmmaker: Tom Weidlinger, Joe Bruchac

A biography of the athlete who became a sports icon in the first half of the 20th century. Beginning with Thorpe’s boyhood at the Sac and Fox Nation to his rise to athletic stardom at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, the story follows Thorpe as he won two gold medals at the 1912 Summer Olympics to his fall from grace in the eyes of the amateur athletic establishment, and his rebound in professional baseball and football. Thorpe retired from pro sports at age 41 just before the stock market crash of 1929. Later becoming a representative for Indian extras in Hollywood, Thorpe also fought for equal pay for Native Americans in the movies and crisscrossed the nation advocating for Indian self-determination in the 1940s.

Screening Dates/Times
Sunday, Nov. 1 at 12:50 p.m. (Shown with Power Paths)
Thursday, Nov 5 at 7:10 p.m. (Shown with Power Paths)

Download entire schedule here

Watch the trailer

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

(56 minutes), Release Date: 2009, Filmmaker: Bo Boudart 

Power Paths follows grassroots efforts among the Navajo, Hopi, and Lakota Sioux as they explore ways to create the new renewable energy resources needed to preserve their communities. By re-vealing the struggle Indian leaders face harnessing abundant natural forces of wind and sun on millions of acres of tribal lands, Power Paths tells a much larger human story about America's struggle to understand, accept and implement a new path toward true energy security. The inspiring stories in this film vividly illustrate our potential for success in producing the power we need while preserving our planet's livability. Telling these stories through the eyes of America’s Tribes exposes fundamental truths that will change the way we look at energy forever.

Screening Dates/Times
Sunday, Nov. 1 at 12:50 p.m. ( Shown with Jim Thorpe, The World's Greatest Athlete)
Thursday, Nov. 5 at 4:50 p.m. ( Shown with Jim Thorpe, The World's Greatest Athlete)

Download entire schedule here

 Watch the trailer

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

(56 minutes), Release Date: 2009, Filmmaker: Jack Kohler

Jack Kohler journeys through California's Klamath River basin, which is in crisis over wild salmon and scarce water. River flow management that benefits utility companies, farmers and ranchers along the Klamath River have brought this vital eco-system to near collapse, endangering several species of wild salmon. Kohler travels through the country of his ancestors where he witnesses the contentious quest for balance between economics, environment, and sustaining the spiritual center of the Basin's Native inhabitants.

Screening Dates/Times

Sunday, Nov. 1 at 3:10 p.m. (Filmmaker Presenting)
Sunday, Nov. 1 at 5:10 p.m. (Shown with Video Letters from Prison)
Thursday, Nov 5 at 7:10 p.m. (Shown with Video Letters from Prison)

Download the entire schedule

Watch the Trailer

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

 (56 minutes), Release Date: 2009, Filmmaker: Reaghan Tarbell            

To Brooklyn and Back: A Mohawk Journey is an hour-long documentary about the personal story of Mohawk filmmaker Reaghan Tarbell from Kahnawake, Quebec as she explores her roots and traces the connections of her family to the Mohawk community in Brooklyn, New York.

For over 50 years, the Kahnawake Mohawks of Quebec, Canada occupied a 10 square block area in the North Gowanus section of Brooklyn, which became known as Little Caughnawaga. The men, skilled ironworkers, came to New York in search of work and brought their wives, children and often, extended family with them. The story of the Mohawk ironworkers is an important one and is one that has been told and continues to be told through documentaries, newspaper and magazine articles. Yet the stories of Kahnawake Mohawk women who lived in Brooklyn have gone untold.

A common misconception is that the women simply followed their ironworker husbands to the city. The truth is many left the reserve by themselves to find work in Brooklyn, just like the Mohawk men. Reaghan's late grandmother, Ida Meloche, was one of them. At the age of 16, Ida moved to Brooklyn with her elderly mother in search for work and a "golden opportunity.

As a matriarchal people, Kahnawake women were responsible for creating and maintaining a Mohawk enclave in the middle of a bustling, diverse city. As mothers, keepers of the home and the children, they were often the bread winners themselves during the hard times when work was slow. Today, Reaghan works in New York City and lives in Brooklyn, just a few blocks away from the legendary Mohawk community that she heard stories about while growing up in Kahnawake. The women who built this community were her grandmothers, aunts and other relatives, which she feels proud of their accomplishments to tell their stories in this documentary.

The contributions and stories of the Mohawk women who were instrumental in the creation of Little Caughnawaga will be told through interviews, archival photos, home movies and their visit to the old neighborhood. The story also unfolds through the perspective of the director, a young Mohawk woman. Directed by Reaghan Tarbell from Kahnawake, this documentary was produced by Mushkeg Media Inc. in English with French and Mohawk language versions.

Screening Date/Time
Saturday, Oct. 31 at 3 p.m. ( Shown with For the Rights of All)
Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 5 p.m. ( Shown with For the Rights of All)

Download entire schedule here

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

(56 minutes), Release Date: 2009, Filmmaker: Jeff Silverman

This program tells the true-life story of an extraordinary Alaskan woman who becomes an unlikely hero in the fight for civil rights. Elizabeth Peratrovich—a young, unassuming Tlingit Indian mother of three testified before the Alaska State Senate in 1945 and swayed the floor vote with her compelling testimony in favor of the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Bill, the first civil rights bill passed in the United States since the Civil War.

Screening Dates/Times

Saturday, Oct. 31 at 3 p.m. (Shown with To Brooklyn and Back: A Mohawk Journey)
Tuesday, Nov. 3 at 5 p.m. (Shown with To Brooklyn and Back: A Mohawk Journey)

Download entire schedule here

Watch the Trailer

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

(102 minutes), Release Date: 2009, Filmmaker: Toshifumi Matsushita 

PACHAMAMA is a spiritual tale set in Bolivia. The protagonist is a 13-year-old boy who lives in the traditional way, with his family near the salt lake of Uyuni. One spring he goes with his father on his first caravan. Strapping blocks of salt to the backs of their llamas, they follow the "Salt Trail" for months, exchanging the previous mineral for other products of the Andes. Along the way, through many experiences and encounters, the boy discovers who he is as a young man and a Quechua. As the trip comes to a close, he meets a beautiful girl at a festival. Their two young hearts awaken, as they share a simple but profound dream: the ride a bicycle together across the salt lake. By the end, he discovers what his grandmother meant by "the gift of Pachamama."

Screening Dates/Times
Saturday, Oct. 31 at 9:30 p.m.
Wednesday, Nov. 4 at 7:10 p.m.

Download entire schedule here