2008 Rochester Native American Film Festival

March

9: Mohawk Girls and Other Films with Dr. Jason Younker and Jim Healy

11: Fancy Dancing and Drum Performance and Native American Arts & Crafts

11: Expiration Date

14: Doe Boy

24: An Evening with James Luna Vis. A Vis. Native Tongue

27: The Velvet Devil

28: An Evening of Short Documentaries with Torry Mendoza

Feb. 4: Pocahontas with Russell Means
6 – 9 p.m., Callahan Theatre, Nazareth College

1995, Walt Disney Home Studios, 84-min. This Disney animated feature tells of the historical romance of Capt. John Smith and Chief Powhatan’s daughter, Pocahontas.

Speaker: Russell Means (Oglala/Lakota) is a life-long indigenous rights/constitutional rights activist best known for his involvement with The American Indian Movement. He provided the voice of Chief Powhatan in the two Disney Pocahontas movies.

Feb. 13: The Mission with Dr. Thomas J. Lappas
7 – 10:30 p.m., Golisano Academic Center, Room 38, Nazareth College

1986, Roland Joffe, 128-min. Robert DeNiro and Jeremy Irons star as two men, one of the sword and one of the cloth, who unite to risk everything against the forces of two empires in order to save an endangered South American Indian tribe during the mid-18th century.

Speaker: Dr. Thomas J. Lappas is an assistant professor of history at Nazareth College of Rochester. His research and writing deals with Native American-White relations in the Colonial and Early National periods.

Feb. 15: Native American Animation and Storytelling for Children
6 – 7:30 p.m., Basil 135, St. John Fisher College

Feb. 21: The Searchers with Dr. Mark Rice
7 – 10:30 p.m., Golisano Academic Center, Room 38, Nazareth College

1956, John Ford, 119 min. This Western epic tells the story of Ethan Edwards, a bitter, middle-aged loner and Civil War veteran played by John Wayne, who spends years looking for his abducted niece who was kidnapped by Indians.

Speaker: Dr. Mark Rice, Associate Professor of American Studies at St. John Fisher College.

March 9: Mohawk Girls & Other Films with Dr. Jason Younker and Jim Healy
1 – 4 p.m., George Eastman House

2005, Tracey Deer (Mohawk), 53 min. With insight, humor and compassion, the filmmaker provides an insider’s look at life on the Kahnawake reserve, just across the St. Lawrence River from Montreal. Presented with closed captioning.

Mohawk Girls will be preceeded by three short, silent works by pioneering Native American filmmaker James Young Deer: The Indian Raid (1911, 10 min.); Attack of the Indians (1911, 10 min.); and The Squawman’s Sweetheart (1912, 10min.), featuring live piano by Philip C. Carli. Introduction by speaker Jim Healy, Assistant Curator, Exhibitions, Motion Picture Department, George Eastman House.

Also screening: Smoke Break, 2005, Sally Kewayosh (Ojibwe/Cree), 3 min. Camera-happy passers-by won’t let a Native American performer take a break, until…

Speaker: Jason Younker, Ph.D. (Coquille) Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Assistant to the Provost for Native American Relations, Rochester Institute of Technology; Dr. Younker teaches numerous Native American themed courses at RIT, including Native Americans in Film.

Performer Joe Cross (Caddo/Potawatomi) Joe has been a part of New York City’s Native American artistic community since the late ‘70s. As founder of Leaf Arrow Storytellers, he has performed since 1990 in various Off-Broadway plays and on television programs such as HBO’s Chris Rock, ABC’s Spin City, CBS’s David Letterman, and NBC’s LA Law.

March 11: Fancy Dancing and Drum Performance and Native American Arts & Crafts
12:30 – 2 p.m., Campus Center Atrium, Monroe Community College

2006. Charlie Silvercloud III carries around a family curse passed down from his grandfather; death by a milk truck on his 25th birthday. With eight days left, Charlie accepts his fate and starts taking care of his unfinished business, like watering his plants and returning his library books and so on. But while he’s out casket hunting, he meets a girl who just won’t let him die in peace. Panel discussion to follow.

2001, Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/ Arapaho), 83 min. Set in the heart of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, The Doe Boy tells the story of Hunter, a young man of mixed parentage, who is never quite at home in the complicated circumstances of his life, including his hemophilia. Eventually he must find a way to be his own man, facing love, death, and the perils of his illness. Panel discussion to follow.

March 24: An Evening with James Luna
Vis. A Vis. Native Tongue
6 p.m., Theater, Monroe Community College

This one-hour documentary delves into the lives of two indigenous artists, Ningali Lawford and James Luna. Throughout a four-day period, the artists use an interactive video link to share dialogue, performances, and video diaries providing a thought provoking reminder of the vitality and importance of American Indian and Aboriginal cultures.

Speaker: James Luna—a member of the La Jolla band of Luiseño Indians—is a performance and installation artist who infuses form and function into his awareness of Indian Identity. His art shows the consciousness of contemporary Native American life as it intersects or contradicts with popular perceptions of the American Indian. He has performed and exhibited his work nationally and in Japan, and he won the Distinguished Fellow Award from the Eiteljorg Museum in 2007.

2006, Andrea Menard (Metis). The year is 1945. The glamorous singing sensation known as The Velvet Devil is performing on-stage at Torontos legendary Hippodrome theatre. But in the middle of her signature tune, strange things begin to happen—a frightening premonition, a telegram, sad and terrible news. Soon Velvet is on a reluctant journey back to her secret Métis roots in Saskatchewan, accompanied by a flood of music, images, and feelings that have been locked away far too long.

March 28: An Evening of Short Documentaries with Torry Mendoza
7 p.m., Basil 135, St. John Fisher College

Plastic Warriors. 2004, Amy Tall Chief (Osage), 26 min. Native New Yorkers give their emotional responses to terms like “squaw” and “redskin” in this thought-provoking documentary. The Border Crossed Us. 2005, Rachael J. Nez (Navajo), 26 min. Since time immemorial the Tohono O’odham have crossed borders freely between their communities in the U.S. and Mexico. This work examines the ways in which current immigration and naturalization policy are putting their way of life at risk. White Shamans and Plastic Medicine Men. 1996, Terry Macy (Wasco) and Dan Hart, 25 min. This award-winning documentary deals with the popularization and commercialization of Native American spiritual traditions by Non-Indians.

Speaker: Local filmmaker Torry Mendoza (Mescalero Apache) addresses the past, present, and future condition of Native Americans within the political, cultural, and spiritual climate of America. In addition to discussing the evening’s films, he will also screen some of his new work.

April 6: Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire
2 p.m., Basil 135, St. John Fisher College

2005, Carol P. Cornsilk (Cherokee), 86 min. LeAnne Howe travels to Cherokee, North Carolina, to the home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians in search of the father she never knew. Instead, the community she discovers leads her to ask crucial questions about identity, cultural preservation, health, capitalism, religion, and assimilation.

Speaker: LeAnne Howe is an enrolled citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is an American Indian author, playwright, and scholar. Born and educated in Oklahoma, her work primarily deals with American Indian experiences. She currently is the Interim Director for the American Indian Studies program, and teaches in the MFA program in English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

April 8: An Exploration of American Indian Identity
6:30 p.m., R. Thomas Flynn Campus Center, Monroe A and B, Building 305, MCC

Apples and Indians. 2006, Loren Olson (Metis), 5 min. The filmmaker playfully riffs on his ethnicity and identity.

Half of Anything. 2006, Jonathon S. Tomhave (Hidatsa/Hocak/ Potawatomi), 24 min. Responding to the question “What is a real Indian?” four interview subjects—including John Trudell and Sherman Alexie—share their various perspectives.

Conversion. 2006, Nanobah Becker (Navajo), 8 min. Christian missionaries disrupt a community on the Navajo reservation by compelling a medicine man to throw away his medicine bag, causing him to get sick. In spite of his subsequent death, his granddaughter remains transfixed with the image of Christ on a bible card.

April 8: An Evening with N. Scott Momaday:
The Crisis of Identity Facing Native Americans and Indigenous People
7:30 p.m., Theater, Monroe Community College

Referred to as the “dean of American Indian writers” by The New York Times, Scott Momaday holds an important place in the American literary arts. A poet, a playwright essayist and novelist, Momaday crafts—in language and imagery—majestic landscapes of a second culture. Momaday was the first Native American to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn. His brilliant use of language has garnered him countless awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, The Autry Museum of Heritage Humanities Prize, a prize from the Academy of American Poets and “Mondello,” Italy’s highest literary award.

ADMISSION: $10 to general public. Tickets available at www.monroecctickets.com or by calling (585) 292-2534.