Native American Film and Video Festival

Last updated

The Native American Film and Video Festival was a noncompetitive showcase of film, video and audio productions. It was held biennially in New York City from 1997 to 2011. Each festival screened between 50 and 80 documentaries, short features and animations, introduced by their producers and members of the native communities represented. Works to be featured in a given festival were chosen by a team of selectors made up of media makers and cultural activists from among indigenous peoples of the Americas and the program staff of the Film and Video Center of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian. Selectors have included indigenous film makers such as Chris Eyre, Randy Redroad, and Nora Naranjo-Morse, and Native American cultural experts and academics such as G. Peter Jemison, Beverly Singer, and Paul Apodaca.

Founded in 1979, the Festival is internationally recognized as the first to feature Native productions from throughout the Americas and the Arctic Circle; indigenous media makers participate from Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, and the United States (including Hawaii).


Related Research Articles

The Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) is an organisation founded in 1980 to expose Aboriginal music and culture to the rest of Australia. Based in Alice Springs, the organisation is particularly focused on the involvement of the local Indigenous community in its production. CAAMA is involved in radio, television and recorded music.

Tonantzin Carmelo American actress

Tonantzin Carmelo is an American actress. She is known for her acting roles in film, TV and stage productions including in the Steven Spielberg miniseries, Into the West, for which she received a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Outstanding Performance by a Female in a Television Movie or Miniseries.

Baron Peter Von Puttkamer is a Canadian filmmaker known for his unique approach to adventure documentary series for network television, and for his work with Indigenous communities in his country and around the world. He has won major international awards for his work as a writer, director and producer, and was recently nominated for the 2015 Environmental Media Awards for his Nat Geo series, Biggest & Baddest, which he directed and co-produced with his wife and business partner, Sheera Von Puttkamer. For over thirty years, the couple has run Gryphon Productions and has a catalog that includes hundreds of finished films and videos, many that have appeared on television and cable networks globally and continue to be used in classrooms and outreach centers as educational and advocacy videos.

Pura Fé Tuscarora/Taino, is an Indigenous singer-songwriter, teacher, story teller and reviver of Canoe song/dance and womans drum.

Isuma production company

Isuma is an artist collective and Canada's first Inuit-owned (75%) production company, co-founded by Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq and Norman Cohn in Igloolik, Nunavut in 1990. Known internationally for its award-winning film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language, Isuma was selected to represent Canada at the 2019 Venice Biennale where they screened the film One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, the first presentation of art by Inuit in the Canada Pavilion.

Paul Apodaca

Paul Apodaca is an associate professor of Anthropology and American Studies at Chapman University.

Sundance Institute American non-profit organisation

Sundance Institute is a non-profit organization founded by Robert Redford committed to the growth of independent artists. The institute is driven by its programs that discover and support independent filmmakers, theatre artists and composers from all over the world. At the core of the programs is the goal to introduce audiences to the artists' new work, aided by the institute's labs, granting and mentorship programs that take place throughout the year in the United States and internationally.

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world's largest Indigenous film and media arts festival, held annually in Toronto in the month of October. The festival focuses on the film, video, radio, and new media work of Indigenous, Aboriginal and First Peoples from around the world. The festival includes screenings, parties, panel discussions, and cultural events.

Asian American International Film Festival

The Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF) is an international film festival held annually during the summer in New York City to showcase the works of both emerging and experienced Asian and Asian American filmmakers and media artists across a diverse range of genres and styles.

Longhouse Media

Longhouse Media is a Washington state non-profit indigenous media arts organization, based in Seattle. It was established in January 2005 by Executive Director, Tracy Rector and former Artistic Director, Annie Silverstein, with the support of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community. Longhouse Media supports the use of today’s technologies by indigenous people and communities as a tool for self-expression, cultural preservation, and social change. Longhouse Media counts 4 full-time and 3 part-time staff, 30 active volunteers, and 8 board members. Among the founding board members is award-winning author, playwright and poet Sherman Alexie, from the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Tribes.

Shelley Niro is a Mohawk filmmaker and visual artist from New York and Ontario. She is known for her photographs using herself and female family members cast in contemporary positions to challenge the stereotypes and clichés of Native American women.

Ethnocinema

Ethnocinema, from Jean Rouch’s cine-ethnography and ethno-fictions, is an emerging practice of intercultural filmmaking being defined and extended by Melbourne, Australia-based writer and arts educator, Anne Harris, and others. Originally derived from the discipline of anthropology, ethnocinema is one form of ethnographic filmmaking that prioritises mutuality, collaboration and social change. The practice's ethos claims that the role of anthropologists, and other cultural, media and educational researchers, must adapt to changing communities, transnational identities and new notions of representation for the 21st century.

National Screen Institute Non-profit organization headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

The National Screen Institute - Canada is a non-profit organization headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. The organization describes itself as "Serving content creators across Canada to tell unforgettable stories through industry-informed training and mentoring."

Trevor Mack Canadian Tsilhqotin filmmaker (born 1992)

Trevor Mack is a Canadian Tsilhqot'in filmmaker and activist.

Loretta Sarah Todd is a Canadian Indigenous film director. Her first dramatic feature, Monkey Beach, based on the iconic novel by Eden Robinson, recently launched to strong audience and critical response, screening at TIFF, opening the Vancouver International Film Festival and sweeping the Drama awards at the American Indian and Red Nation Film Festivals in the USA, including Best Film and Best Director. With international awards adding up, Monkey Beach was the #1 Canadian film for 4 weeks at Cineplex and Landmark Theatres.

Zoe Leigh Hopkins is a Canadian Heiltsuk/Mohawk writer and film director who began her career in acting in 1991 and later pursued film making.

Lisa Jackson (filmmaker) Canadian filmmaker

Lisa Jackson is a Canadian Screen Award and Genie Award-winning Canadian and Anishinaabe filmmaker. Her films have been broadcast on APTN and Knowledge Network, as well as CBC's ZeD, Canadian Reflections and Newsworld and have screened at festivals including HotDocs, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Melbourne, Worldwide Short Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival.

Elizabeth LaPensée

Elizabeth LaPensée is an assistant professor in the Departments of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric, & American Cultures at Michigan State University. She is of Irish, Anishinaabe, and Métis descent. She studies and creates video games, interactive digital media, animation, visual art, and comics to express Indigenous ways of knowing. Her mother is Grace Dillon, a professor at Portland State University.

Sky Hopinka is a Native American visual artist and filmmaker who is a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño people.

Indigenous media is the use of communication tools, pathways, and outlets by indigenous peoples for their own political and cultural purposes.