Resources

Barking Water

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

 (81 minutes), Release Date: N/A, Filmmaker: Sterlin Harjo/Director

BarkingWater Before Oklahoma was a red state, it was known as the Land of the Red People, described by the Choctaw phrase Okla Humma. In his sophomore film, Sterlin Harjo takes viewers on a road trip through his own personal Oklahoma, which includes an eclectic mix of humanity. Irene and Frankie have a difficult past, but Frankie needs Irene to help him with one task. He needs to get out of the hospital and go home to his daughter and new grandbaby to make amends. Irene had been his one, true, on-again, off-again love until they parted ways for good. But to make up for the past, Irene agrees to help him in this trying time. With steady and graceful performances by Richard Ray Whitman as Frankie and Casey Camp-Horinek as Irene, this story takes viewers for a ride in the backseat of Frankie and Irene’s Indian car, listening to their past and the rhythmic soundtrack that sets the beat for a redemptive road journey. Harjo wraps us in the charm and love of Oklahoma through the people and places Irene and Frankie visit along the way. In this sparingly sentimental and achingly poignant film, Harjo claims his place as one of the most truthful and honest voices working in American cinema today. Barking Water is an expression of gratitude for the ability to have lived and loved.

 

Screening Dates/Times

 

Oct. 30- Nov. 5 (Showing Daily  in conjunction with the Visionmaker Film Festival) Admission to BARKING WATER is at regular Ross prices

Download entire schedule here

Watch the trailer  

Club Native: How Thick is Your Blood?

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

(78 minutes), Release Date: 2008, Filmmaker: Tracey Deer/Producer

Club Native

In Club Native, acclaimed Mohawk director Tracey Deer follows the stories of four inspiring Mohawk women who share about the heartbreaking costs of "marrying out" of the Mohawk Nation and the clash between love, growing up biracial, and preserving the fabric of a close-knit community. The filmmaker traces the roots of exclusionary attitudes to 100 years of discriminatory government policy, beginning with the Indian Act and exacerbated by lingering preconceptions about blood quantum that have left a divisive legacy within the community. The result is a candid and deeply moving look at the frustration suffered by many First Nations women, as well as a powerful story of the triumph of love and human spirit.  

Colin Low Award Best Canadian Documentary - Documentary Film and Video Festival; Official Selection - Hot Docs; Honorable Mention for the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary award - ImagineNATIVE Media Arts Festival

Screening Dates/Times
Friday, Oct. 30 at 5 p.m.
Sunday, Nov 1 at 9:30 p.m.

Download entire schedule here

Finding Dawn

2009 VisionMaker Film Festival home

 

 

(73 minutes), Release Date: 2006, Filmmaker: Christine Welsh/Producer


Finding Dawn

Finding Dawn puts a human face on a tragedy that has received precious little attention - and one which is surprisingly similar to the situation in Ciudad Juarez, on the other side of the U.S. border. Acclaimed Metis filmmaker Christine Welsh embarks on an epic journey to shed light on these murders and disappearances of the estimated 500 Aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in Canada over the past 30 years that remain unresolved to this day. This engrossing film explores the disturbing, world-wide culture of impunity that allows murders of women - especially those who are poor, indigenous, or sex workers - to go unsolved and unpunished. 

Winner Gold Audience Award - VancouverAmnesty International Film Festival 2006; Official Selection, ImagineNative Film Festival 2006; Official Selection, San Francisco  American Indian Film Festival 2006

 

Screening Dates/Times
Saturday, Oct. 31 at 1 p.m.
Monday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m.

Download entire schedule here

To Brooklyn and Back: A Mohawk Journey

For viewers: Please contact your local public television to find out when they will be scheduling this program.

For Stations: Nov 2 09, NOLA: TBBA

Below are resources for stations to use in promoting their carriage of To Brooklyn and Back: A Mohawk Journey

  • High quality stills (examples and links to the right)

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For over 50 years, the Kahnawake Mohawks of Quebec, Canada occupied a 10 square block hub 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.

Little Caughnawaga: To Brooklyn and Back is 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 once legendary Mohawk community through the stories of the women who lived there.

 

Jim Thorpe: The World's Greatest Athlete

For viewers: Please contact your local public television to find out when they will be scheduling this program.

For Stations: Oct 2009, NOLA: JORP 000

Below are resources for stations to use in promoting their carriage of Jim Thorpe: World's Greatest Athlete

  • High quality stills (examples and links to the right)

  • Watch and/or embed the trailer on your website

  • Official Website

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Jim Thorpe, The World’s Greatest Athlete is a biography of the Native American athlete who became a sports icon in the first half of the 20th century. This is a film about a man who used his amazing physical prowess as a way to affirm his American Indian identity in the face of unrelenting efforts to eradicate Native American culture. Jim Thorpe, The World’s Greatest Athlete. It is the first documentary film to tell the story of Thorpe’s life outside of his well-known athletic victories.

The film uses in-depth interviews with Thorpe’s surviving children, some simple recreations and images culled from over seventy-five archive sources, both stills and motion picture.

 

Debunking the Myths of Storytelling

We are posting Fernanda Rossi's four Myths in our Producers Newsletter, I encourage you to sign up for it.

Internationally renowned speaker, author, and story consultant  Fernanda Rossi has doctored over 300 documentaries, scripts, and fundraising trailers including two Academy Award® nominated  documentaries. In addition to private consultations, lectures, and seminars worldwide, she has served as festival juror and grant panelist.  She is also the author of the book Trailer Mechanics: A Guide to Making your Documentary Fundraising Trailer.

"You might have heard the conflict predicament uttered with different levels of conviction by funders, investors and distributors. Or, at times, repeated by some self-appointed dramatic conflict police officer –often a well-intended yet misguided filmmaker that searches for answers to their story structure conundrums in screenwriting textbooks, or worse, documentary books and articles that were based on screenwriting books!"... Read more by click on the PDF.

 

The Twelve Days of Native Christmas

For viewers: Please contact your local public television to find out when they will be scheduling this program.

For Stations: Nov 15 09, NOLA: NANC 0 J1

Below are resources for stations to use in promoting their carriage of The Twelve Days of Native Christmas

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The Twelve Days of Native Christmas is an animated short film written and directed by Gary Robinson with illustrations by Jesse T. Hummingbird.  The whole family will enjoy this whimsical adaptation of the timeless classic yuletide song The Twelve Days of Christmas adapted to a Native American perspective and illustrated by one of America's great Indian artists Twelve different Native American groups are represented in the lyrics and images of this fanciful animated short film.

 

River of Renewal

For viewers: Please contact your local public television to find out when they will be scheduling this program.

For Stations: Oct 09, NOLA: RVRN 00 K1

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Eight years in the making, River of Renewal chronicles the on going battle over the resources of Northern California's and Oregon's Klamath Basin.  The film reveals how different dominant groups over the generations have extracted resources from the Klamath Basin with disastrous consequences including the collapse of wild salmon populations.

This collision between sustainability and exploitation of our precious and dimishing resources.  The outcome may be the largest dam removal project in history and the restoration of a once vital river.

 

 

Power Paths

For viewers: Please contact your local public television to find out when they will be scheduling this program.

For Stations: Nov 2009 NOLA: INLE 1104

Below are resources for stations to use in promoting their carriage of Power Paths

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Cheyenne River Indian School, S.D., circa 1900. Photo courtesy South Dakota Historical Society

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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 American's stuggle 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.

 

For the Rights of All: Ending Jim Crow In Alaska

For Viewers: Please contact your local public television to find out when they will be scheduling this program.

For Stations: Nov 09, NOLA: FREJ 000 SD-Base Revision 001, FREJ 000 HD-Base Revision 001

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In the Alaska Purchase of 1867 the United States took on more than just the land. There were indigenous people living everywhere in Alaska. Like Native Americans in the lower 48, Alaska Natives struggled to keep their basic human rights as well as protect their ancient ties to the land. The Bill of Rights did not apply to them. Through extensive reenactments and rarely seen historic footage and photographs, ‘For the Rights of All’ reveals these remarkable people and their non-violent struggle for civil rights. This extraordinary story bridges the Civil War to World War II to today’s Native leaders, who find inspiration in the efforts of the generations that preceded them. Those efforts culminated in the passage of the Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945, one of the first such laws passed anywhere in America, and ten years before Brown versus Board of Education. Of particular note is a young Tlingit activist, Elizabeth Peratrovich, whose dramatic testimony on behalf of the Act is fully reenacted in this film by Jeffry Lloyd Silverman. Narrated by Peter Coyote.

 

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