Short Cuts is a 1993 American comedy-drama film, directed by Robert Altman. Filmed from a screenplay by Altman and Frank Barhydt, it is inspired by nine short stories and a poem by Raymond Carver. The film has a Los Angeles setting, which is substituted for the Pacific Northwest backdrop of Carver's stories. Short Cuts traces the actions of 22 principal characters, both in parallel and at occasional loose points of connection. The role of chance and luck is central to the film, and many of the stories concern death and infidelity.
A road movie is a film genre in which the main characters leave home on a road trip, typically altering the perspective from their everyday lives. Road movies often depict travel in the hinterlands, with the films exploring the theme of alienation and examining the tensions and issues of the cultural identity of a nation or historical period; this is all often enmeshed in a mood of actual or potential menace, lawlessness, and violence, a "distinctly existential air" and is populated by restless, "frustrated, often desperate characters". The setting includes not just the close confines of the car as it moves on highways and roads, but also booths in diners and rooms in roadside motels, all of which helps to create intimacy and tension between the characters. Road movies tend to focus on the theme of masculinity, some type of rebellion, car culture, and self-discovery. The core theme of road movies is "rebellion against conservative social norms".
Adoor Gopalakrishnan is an Indian film director, script writer, and producer and is regarded as one of the most notable and renowned filmmakers in India. With the release of his first feature film Swayamvaram (1972), Gopalakrishnan pioneered the new wave in Malayalam cinema during the 1970s. In a career spanning over five decades, Gopalakrishnan has made only 12 feature films to date. His films are made in the Malayalam language and often depict the society and culture of his native state Kerala. Nearly all of his films premiered at Venice, Cannes and Toronto International Film Festival. Along with Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, Gopalakrishnan is one of the most recognized Indian film directors in world cinema.
Dev Benegal is an Indian filmmaker and screenwriter, most known for his debut film English, August (1994), which won the Best Feature Film in English at the 42nd National Film Awards.
Suzan Shown Harjo is an advocate for Native American rights. She is a poet, writer, lecturer, curator, and policy advocate who has helped Native peoples recover more than one million acres (4,000 km²) of tribal lands. After co-producing the first American Indian news show in the nation for WBAI radio while living in New York City, and producing other shows and theater, in 1974 she moved to Washington, D.C., to work on national policy issues. She served as Congressional liaison for Indian affairs in the President Jimmy Carter administration and later as president of the National Council of American Indians.
NewFest: The New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival put on by The New Festival, Inc., is one of the most comprehensive forums of national and international LGBT film/video in the world.
Madhur Bhandarkar is an Indian film director, script writer, and producer. In 2016, Bhandarkar was honoured with the Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour, by the Government of India.
Joy Harjo is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms. Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.
Darius Goes West: The Roll of his Life is a documentary film by Logan Smalley about Darius Weems, a teenager living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy. In the middle of 2005 Weems embarked on a 7,000 mile road trip across the United States from his hometown in Georgia to MTV Headquarters in Los Angeles to ask them to customize his wheelchair on Pimp My Ride, as well to promote awareness of the fatal disease Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and to raise money for research into a cure.
Dreamkeeper is a 2003 film written by John Fusco and directed by Steve Barron. The main plot of the film is the conflict between a Lakota elder and storyteller named Pete Chasing Horse and his Lakota grandson, Shane Chasing Horse.
Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee is a 1994 TNT film starring Irene Bedard, Tantoo Cardinal, Pato Hoffmann, Joseph Runningfox, Lawrence Bayne, and Michael Horse and August Schellenberg. The film is based on Mary Crow Dog's autobiography Lakota Woman, wherein she accounts her troubled youth, involvement with the American Indian Movement, and relationship with Lakota medicine man and activist Leonard Crow Dog. The film is notable for being the first American film to feature an indigenous Native American actress in the starring role. Lakota Woman is also the third overall and first sound film with an entirely indigenous cast after In the Land of the Head Hunters and Daughter of Dawn.
Benjamin Harjo Jr. was a Native American painter and printmaker based in Oklahoma.
Four Sheets to the Wind is a 2007 independent drama film written and directed by Sterlin Harjo. It was Harjo's first feature film, and won several awards at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and American Indian Film Festival.
The New York Indian Film Festival (NYIFF) is an annual film festival that takes place in New York City, and screens films relating to India, the Indian Diaspora, and the work of Indian filmmakers. The festival began in November 2001 and was founded by Aroon Shivdasani and the Indo-American Arts Council. About 40 films are screened, including features films, shorts, documentaries, and animated films.
Carter Camp was an American Indian Movement activist. Camp played a leading role in the 1972 Trail of Broken Treaties that traveled to Washington, DC, where protesters took over the Department of Interior building. Camp was also one of the organizers of the 1973 Wounded Knee occupation on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, to highlight the Lakota desire for sovereignty.
Sterlin Harjo is an American filmmaker. He has directed three feature films, a feature documentary, and the FX comedy drama series Reservation Dogs, all of them set in his home state of Oklahoma and concerned primarily with Native American people and content.
Mekko is a 2015 American drama film directed by Sterlin Harjo. Harjo's third feature film, it is a thriller set among a community of homeless Native Americans in Tulsa.
The 1491s are a Native American sketch comedy group, with members based in Oklahoma, Minnesota, and Montana. While the members' sketch comedy has had a growing cult following since the mid-2000s, and their videos since 2009, they are perhaps best known for their work in more widely-known shows such as Rutherford Falls and Reservation Dogs.
Rod Rondeaux is a Native American actor and stuntman. As an actor his work includes the 2005 miniseries, Into the West, Comanche Moon in 2008, The Cayuse in the 2010 film, Meek's Cutoff and the lead role in the 2015 film, Mekko. His stunt work includes Reel Injun and Comanche Moon.
Reservation Dogs is an Indigenous American television series created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi for FX Productions. It follows the lives of four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma, as they spend their days committing crime and fighting it.
