Native American Film Preservation Festival
November 6-9, 2008
Oklahoma City Museum of Art
A series of restored films depicting images of Native Americans in
Hollywood
Celebrating Native American Heritage Month with Four Feature Films &
Special Guests
Thu 11.6.08
REDSKIN

Live musical accompaniment performed by the Mont Alto Motion Picture
Orchestra.
One of Paramount's last silent films, released in February 1929, was
this spectacularly photographed tale of a Navajo caught between two
cultures. Richard Dix as a young man abducted to a government boarding
school as a child, but his partial assimilation into white society
leaves him neither Indian nor white, just "Redskin." The film was far
ahead of its time in presenting a sympathetic and authentic portrayal of
Native Americans and the prejudices they faced. Director: Victor
Schertzinger 1929 USA 82min.
Fri 11.7.08
HOUSE MADE OF DAWN

N. Scott Momaday's (
Momaday is Kiowa) novel House Made of Dawn, winner of the Pulitzer
Prize for Fiction in 1969, continues to receive abundant critical
attention and remains a landmark in the emergence of a literary "Native
American renaissance." Richardson Morse's 1972 film version-the first
cinematic adaptation of a Native-authored novel-marks a turning point in
the history of Native/non-Native collaborative filmmaking. House Made of
Dawn broke with mainstream Hollywood representations of Indians in using
formal stylistic experimentation to depict interior states of a
character from a tribal-specific worldview. The film, like the novel,
dramatizes the psychological dislocation of the protagonist, Abel, as he
confronts his traumatic history of encounters with non-Native society,
and starred Larry Littlebird in the role of a young Pueblo man torn
between the values and traditions of his childhood and the harshness of
urban life. 90min.
Sat 11.8.08
THE EXILES

The Exiles chronicles one night in the lives of young Native American
men and women living in the Bunker Hill district of Los Angeles. Based
entirely on interviews with the participants and their friends, the film
follows a group of exiles - transplants from Southwest reservations - as
they flirt, drink, party, fight, and dance. Filmmaker Kent MacKenzie
spent long hours making friends and earning the confidence of these
Indians who finally agreed to re-enact scenes from their lives for this
picture. All of the actors, some of whom were recruited on the spur of
the moment during the shooting, play themselves in the film. Restored by
UCLA Film & Television Archive. Director: Kent MacKenzie 1961 USA 72min.
NR 35mm.
Sun 11.09.08
IN THE LAND OF WAR CANOES PANEL DISCUSSION: NATIVE AMERICAN IMAGES IN
FILM

Best known as one of the premiere photographers of the 20th century,
Edward S. Curtis devoted his life to documenting the disappearing world
of the American Indian. In this film Curtis retold a tribal story of
love and revenge among the Kwakiutl Indians of Vancouver Island. Curtis
spent three years with the Kwakiutl to meticulously recreate their way
of life before the white man came. In addition to the magnificent
painted war canoes of the title, the film features wonderful native
costumes, dancing and rituals--including a powerful scene of a vision
quest. Restored from the only surviving print in 1972 with a new score
of original music and chants by the Kwakiutls themselves, the film
presents a magnificent image of a lost world. Director: Edward S. Curtis
1914 USA 47min. NR