#ChangingTheStory This August, Firelight partners with Vision Maker Media, The Flaherty and NET Nebraska public television to host our Groundwork Lab as part of the Vision Maker Media Producer Training in Lincoln, Nebraska with major funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Kicking off with a screening curated by The Flaherty - showcasing short films by and with Native communities - we'll join several Native non-fiction filmmakers for three days of in depth workshops and trainings dedicated to increase the number of American Indians and Alaska Natives producing quality public broadcasting programs.
The program features work by 2019 Flaherty Fellows Katsitsionni Fox, Tenzin Phuntsog, and Joie Horowitz along with a screening of the 1968 Seminar film You are on Indian Land . Flaherty Executive Director Jon-Sesrie Goff and filmmaker Tenzin Phuntsog will be in discussion with lab participants following the screening.
Without a Whisper (2019 dir. Katsitsionni Fox ) - 2019 Vision Maker Media Flaherty Fellow
An untold story of how Native American women helped to fire the struggle of American Women for freedom and equality in the suffrage movement. Dr. Sally Roesch Wagner and Mohawk Clan mother Louise Wakerakatste Herne share this story.
Alejandro & Miguel ( 2019, dir. Joie Horowitz, 9 min) - 2019 CalArts Flaherty Fellow
Multigenerational borders manifest both emotionally and vocationally in the relationship between Miguel Bencomo and his fourteen-year-old son Alejandro. In this portrait of ranch life in the town of Casa Grandes, Mexico, questions rise surrounding love, connection, escapism and the inherited responsibility of family lineage.
Eclipse (2019, dir. Tenzin Phuntsog , 14 mins) - 2019 Flaherty Fellow
On the occasion of a total solar eclipse, Henry Realbird, a Crow Elder and Poet shares the vision of his people's origin story on top a hill marked with a large wooden cross. Filmed on the Crow Indian Reservation during the annual fair which locals call "the teepee capital of the world." The Film is structured around the importance of visions, dreams and the eclipse, a rare natural phenomenon, which for the Crow people symbolize the birth of a new age, the death of the sun and the birth of a new moon. The retelling is told as it was transmitted to Henry once in a dream and spoken as if being passed on to his grandson.
Wawa (2014, dir. Sky Hopinka , 6 min) 2018 Flaherty Seminar Film
Featuring speakers of chinuk wawa, an Indigenous language from the Pacific Northwest, Wawa begins slowly, patterning various forms of documentary and ethnography. Quickly, the patterns tangle and become confused and commingled, while translating and transmuting ideas of cultural identity, language, and history.
You are on Indian Land (1969, dir. Michael K. Mitchell, 36 min.) - 1968 Flaherty Seminar Film
Made by the Indian Film Crew (IFC), the first all-Indigenous unit at the NFB. It documents a 1969 protest by the Kanien’kéhaka (Mohawk) of Akwesasne, a territory that straddles the Canada–U.S. border. When Canadian authorities prohibited the duty-free cross-border passage of personal purchases—a right established by the Jay Treaty of 1794—Kanien’kéhaka protesters blocked the international bridge between Ontario and New York State. Director Michael Kanentakeron Mitchell later became Grand Chief of Akwesasne. The film was formally credited to him in 2017. You Are on Indian Land screened extensively across the continent, helping to mobilize a new wave of Indigenous activism. It notably was shown at the 1970 occupation of Alcatraz.