Hence the name of a newcomer on the
American
Indian moviemaking scene, the Talking Stick Film Festival.
"I look at each film as each person's time to hold the talking stick, to tell the story in their way," said festival director Karen Redhawk Dallett.
More than 100 films are scheduled to be shown during the inaugural event, which will be held Saturday through June 26 in Santa Fe.
There will be panels and workshops as well, with such notables as actor Wes Studi, director Chris Eyre - whose supernatural thriller "Imprint" will show during the festival - and actor Gary Farmer, who'll do double - duty leading a workshop and playing with his bluesy band, "Gary Farmer and the Troublemakers."
The films were largely written, directed or produced by Indians from the U.S. and Canada, with some offerings from indigenous people of Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Samoa.
"I was surprised how much work is out there - and how much brilliant, really stunning, work is out there," said Dallett, who had envisioned finding 20 to 30 good films for the festival and was blown away when the entries poured in.
That's a huge change from three decades ago, when Michael Smith, a Sioux working with the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation in Seattle, set about to find films - no matter who made them - that rebutted the stereotypical portrayal of Indians.
He scrounged up 17, and the American Indian Film Festival was born in 1975.
Relocated to San Francisco in 1977, the festival is still going strong, with this year's event scheduled Nov. 7 - 15. The American Indian Film Institute, which Smith heads, also holds digital training workshops and traveling film festivals for Indian youth on reservations and in rural communities.
"Video really opened up doors for American Indian artists; film is such a costly medium to work in... Now, with the growth of digital
video, it's really exploded," Smith said.
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As much as film has created stereotypes that have eroded the self - image of generations of Indians, it's also a powerful tool for healing and strengthening and for reshaping those perceptions, according to the institute.
Navajo filmmaker and screenwriter Norman Patrick Brown of Gallup has made about a dozen films over the past 20 years, many in the Navajo language with English subtitles.
He co - produced a 37 minute documentary to be shown at the Talking Stick festival called "Poison Wind," about the effects of uranium
mining. Jenny Pond was the director and producer.
"For many of us, it's not really about the glamor or the high - end production values," said Brown, who has made films about diabetes and drug and
alcohol addiction. "It's mostly serving our community, educating the community."
According to Smith, there are about a dozen Indian and indigenous film festivals in North America: events at the National Museum of the American Indian and the Heard Museum in Phoenix; Sundance Film Festival's Native Forum; the imagineNATIVE film and media arts festival in Toronto; and Dreamspeakers Film Festival in Edmonton, Alberta.
Dallett, who is Catawba and Scottish, has organized the Talking Stick festival for the SEED Graduate Institute in Albuquerque, an educational organization. The festival plans to move to Albuquerque for next year's event.
This inaugural year features 78 recently completed films in dramatic feature, documentary and animation competitions. Works by students and classic films also will be shown.
The festival opens Saturday with the U.S. premiere of "Older Than America," a Canadian film directed by Georgina Lightning, who is Cree, about atrocities at Indian boarding schools. Also on tap opening night: the world premiere of "Paatuwaqatsi - Water, Land, Life," by Hopi director Victor Masayesva.
Panel discussions and workshops during the six - day festival cover topics such as women in film, cultural responsibility, humor, financing and film sound.
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