In partnership with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, the museum presents the latest in Native documentaries, shorts and features during the SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market. To see the full list of daily films and times, log onto www.AmericanIndian.si.edu.
Today’s films:
11 am, SWAIA’s Moving Image Classification X Shorts Winners 2015
Following: Q&A with attending winners moderated by Jhane Myers (Comanche/Blackfeet).
1 pm, Shorts Program V
(Total Running Time: 85 min.)
Kajutaijuq: The Spirit That Comes
(Canada, 2014, 15 min.)
Director: Scott Brachmayer
Producer: Nyla Innuksuk (Inuit)
A young man raised in modern society maintains his cultural identity as a hunter. He returns to the tundra alone to follow his grandfather’s teachings which have been preserved on cassette tape recordings. After killing a seal, he becomes distracted before performing the offering to the seal’s arnirniq. When strange and inexplicable events occur, he fears that the spirit known as Kajutaijuq may be unleashing its wrath.
Stones
(USA, 2009, 20 min.)
Director: Ty Sanga (Native Hawaiian)
In Hawaiian with English subtitles.
Adapted from a Native Hawaiian legend, this is the story of the last family inhabiting the islands after the arrival of the humans. Should they preserve their way of life or embrace the newcomers?
Shown in the 2010 Native Cinema Showcase.
Sikumi/On the Ice
(USA, 2008, 15 min.)
Director: Andrew Okpeaha MacLean (Inupiat)
In Iñupiaq with English subtitles.
When an Inuit hunter drives his dog team out on the frozen Arctic Ocean in search of seals, he becomes a witness to murder. He knows both the victim and the killer.
Shown in the 2008 Native Cinema Showcase.
El Ultimo Consejo
(Mexico, 2012, 12 min.)
Director: Itandehui Jansen (Mixtec)
Mixtec and Spanish with English subtitles.
In an Indigenous community, a ceremony is held when elders pass leadership to a new younger council of men. At that time all the money of the community is publicly counted. The following day, the treasury is empty and the question arises, who stole it?
Día 2/Day 2
(Mexico, 2004, 23 min.)
Director: Dante Cerano Bautista (Purépecha)
In Purépecha and Spanish with English subtitles.
This wryly humorous documentary portrays the event-filled second day of a Purépecha wedding ceremony in Michoacán.
Shown in the 2004 Native Cinema Showcase.
3 pm, O Mestre e o Divino/The Master and Divino
(Brazil, 2013, 85 min.)
Director: Tiago Campos Tôrres
Produced by: Vídeo Nas Aldeias/Video in the Villages
Two filmmakers portray life in the village and in the mission of Sangradouro, Mato Grosso. Adalbert Heide, an eccentric German missionary who soon after contact with the Indians in 1957, starts to film with his Super-8 camera; and Divino Tserewahu, a young Xavante filmmaker who has been producing films for television and cinema festivals since the ’90s. Shifting between complicity, competition, irony,
and affect, they give life to their historical records, revealing peculiar backstages of Indigenous catechization in Brazil.
PRECEDED BY:
Gésture Down (I Don’t Sing)
(USA/Mexico, 2006, 10 min.)
Director: Cedar Sherbert (Kumeyaay)
The filmmaker shares a poetic and personal reflection on his journey to find the last Kumeyaay singer.
