Winter in the Blood | |
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Directed by | Alex Smith Andrew J. Smith |
Written by | Alex Smith Andrew J. Smith |
Based on | Winter in the Blood by James Welch |
Produced by | Sherman Alexie |
Starring | Chaske Spencer Dana Wheeler Nicholson Gary Farmer David Cale Julia Jones David Morse |
Distributed by | Kino Lorber |
Release dates |
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Country | United States |
Language | English |
Winter in the Blood is a 2013 American film written and directed by brothers Alex Smith and Andrew J. Smith [1] and produced by Native American author Sherman Alexie. [2] The film was based on the debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) by noted author James Welch, who was a leader of the Native American renaissance in literature. [2]
The film is set in Montana. In what has been called "a tale of simple, raw struggle and survival among a small-town Native American community", [3] Virgil First Raise, a Native American, returns home after waking drunk in a ditch to find that his wife, Agnes, has left him. He sets out on an odyssey to find her.
Mark Olsen of the Los Angeles Times said the film is concerned with memory and regret and it "feels boldly unburdened by many of the rules of structure and conventional storytelling." [3] It has moments that are "unexpectedly arresting and little jabs of poetic meaning or hard-earned truths reel a viewer back in." [3]
Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times said the film had compassion for the "wounds of childhood" and the "trap of ethnicity." [4] She praised the work of the cinematographer Paula Huidobro, noting that she captured the expanse of the Montana plains and big sky while having "cross-fades [that] parallel the ebb and flow of Virgil’s memories and hallucinations." [4]
The film was an Official Selection at the 2013 Los Angeles, Austin, and American Indian film festivals. [5]
Sherman Joseph Alexie Jr. is a Native American novelist, short story writer, poet, screenwriter, and filmmaker. His writings draw on his experiences as an Indigenous American with ancestry from several tribes. He grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation and now lives in Seattle, Washington.
Smoke Signals is a 1998 coming-of-age comedy-drama film directed by Chris Eyre from a screenplay by Sherman Alexie, based on Alexie's short story collection The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven (1993). The film won several awards and accolades, and was well received at numerous film festivals.
James Phillip Welch Jr., who grew up within the Blackfeet and A'aninin cultures of his parents, was a Native American novelist and poet, considered a founding author of the Native American Renaissance. His novel Fools Crow (1986) received several national literary awards, and his debut novel Winter in the Blood (1974) was adapted as a film by the same name, released in 2013.
The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven is a 1993 collection of interconnected short stories by Sherman Alexie. The characters and stories in the book, particularly "This Is What It Means to Say Phoenix, Arizona", provided the basis of Alexie's screenplay for the film Smoke Signals.
The Business of Fancydancing is a 2002 film written and directed by Sherman Alexie. It is loosely based on his 1992 book of the same name, a collection of stories and poems.
Winter in the Blood is the debut novel of James Welch. It was published by Harper and Row's Native American Publishing Program in 1974. Set on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in north-central Montana during the late 1960s, Winter in the Blood follows a nameless Blackfeet and Gros Ventre (A'aninin) man's episodic journey to piece together his fragmented identity. Welch received praise from such luminaries as Pulitzer Prize-winning Ojibwe author Louise Erdrich, celebrated American novelist Reynolds Price, and Coeur d'Alene author Sherman Alexie. Alexie later produced the film adaptation of the novel, which was released in 2012.
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The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian is a first-person narrative novel by Sherman Alexie, from the perspective of a Native American teenager, Arnold Spirit Jr., also known as "Junior," a 14-year-old promising cartoonist. The book is about Junior's life on the Spokane Indian Reservation and his decision to go to a nearly all-white public high school away from the reservation. The graphic novel includes 65 comic illustrations that help further the plot.
Reservation Blues is a 1995 novel by American writer Sherman Alexie, a citizen of the Spokane Tribe and descendant of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe.
Indian Killer is a novel written by Sherman Alexie, featuring a serial killer in the city of Seattle, Washington, who scalps white men. Because of this technique, he is called the "Indian Killer" and rising fear provokes anti-Native American violence and racial hostility.
Marianna Bronislawa Barbara Palka is a Scottish actress, producer, director, and writer. She is the writer, director and star of the film Good Dick, which screened at the Sundance Film Festival.
The Jeffrey Dahmer Files is an independent documentary film about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer during the summer of his arrest. The film was directed by Chris James Thompson and stars Andrew Swant as Dahmer in fictionalized re-enactment segments which are interwoven with interviews of the medical examiner assigned to the case, the lead detective, and Dahmer's next door neighbor.
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Lily Gladstone is an American actress. Raised on the Blackfeet Reservation, Gladstone is of Piegan Blackfeet, Nez Perce, and European heritage. She earned critical acclaim for portraying Mollie Kyle, an Osage woman who survived the Osage Indian murders, in Martin Scorsese's crime drama film Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), receiving several accolades. She became the first Native American to win the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
186 Dollars to Freedom is a Peruvian-American action drama film written by Monty Fisher and Camilo Vila, directed by Vila and starring John Robinson, Alex Meraz, Michael DeLorenzo, Johnny Lewis, Deborah Kara Unger and Grant Bowler.
Mission Park is a 2013 American thriller drama film directed by Bryan Ramirez, starring Jeremy Ray Valdez, Walter Perez, Will Rothhaar, Joseph Julian Soria and Fernanda Romero.