Walker Art Center Presents A Showcase of Indigenous filmmakers & Storytellers Called INDIgenesis: GEN 3

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Presented over two weeks, the series INDIgenesis: GEN 3, guest curated by indigenous filmmaker Missy Whiteman (Northern Arapaho and Kickapoo Nations), opens with an evening of expanded cinema and includes several shorts programs in the Walker Cinema and Bentson Mediatheque, an afternoon of virtual reality, and a closing-night feature film. 
 
The ongoing showcase of works by Native filmmakers and artists is rooted in Indigenous principles that consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations. GEN 3 connects perspectives and stories from the past, present, and future to convey Indigenous truths, teachings, and values.
 
“Indigenous artists use the creative process of filmmaking for revitalization and narrative sovereignty,” says Whiteman. “Our stories tell us where we came from, re-create our truths, affirm our languages and culture, and inspire us to imagine our Indigenous future. We come from the stars. How far will we take this medium?” Throughout the program, join conversations with artists and community members centered on themes of Indigenous Futurism, revitalization, and artistic creation.

Renovated in 2012, the enhanced 21st-century Walker Cinema is one of the best places to view films in the country. Here’s the lineup of works by Native filmmakers from throughout the country.

Opening Night

Missy Whiteman’s The Coyote Way: Going Back Home, 2016. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.

Opening Night: Remembering the Future Expanded Cinema Screening/Performance

When: Thursday, March 9, 2020, @ 7:30pm

Price: free

Where: Walker Cinema

Combining film, a live score, hoop dancing, hip-hop, and spoken word, a collective of Indigenous artists led by curator Missy Whiteman creates an immersive environment that transcends time and place. Guided by ancestral knowledge systems, traditional stories, and contemporary forms of expression, the expanded cinema program features performances by DJ AO (Hopi/Mdewakatonwan Dakota), Sacramento Knoxx (Ojibwe/Chicano), Lumhe “Micco” Sampson (Mvskoke Creek/Seneca), and Michael Wilson (Ojibwe). Archival found footage and Whiteman’s sci-fi docu-narrative The Coyote Way: Going Back Home (2016), filmed in the community of Little Earth in South Minneapolis, illuminate the space.

View The Coyote Way: Going Back Home trailer

Shane McSauby’s Mino Bimaadiziwin, 2017. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.

Indigenous Lens: Our Reality

What: Short films by multiple directors

When: Friday, March 20, 2020, @ 7pm

Price: $10 ($8 for Walker members, students, and seniors)

Where: Walker Cinema

This evening of short films showcases a collection of contemporary stories about what it means to be Indigenous today, portraying identity and adaptability in a colonialist system. The program spans a spectrum of themes, including two-spirit transgender love, coming of age, reflections on friends and fathers, “indigenizing” pop art, and creative investigations into acts of repatriation. Digital video, 85 min. 

Copresented with Hud Oberly (Comanche/Osage/Caddo), Indigenous Program at Sundance Institute (in attendance). 

Lore
Directed by Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) 

Images of friends and landscapes are fragmented and reassembled as a voice tells stories, composing elements of nostalgia in terms of lore. 2019, 10 min. View excerpt.

Culture Capture: Terminal Adddition
Directed by New Red Order: Adam Khalil (Ojibway), Zack Khalil (Ojibway), Jackson Polys (Tlingit), Bayley Sweitzer

The latest video by the public secret society known as the New Red Order is an incendiary indictment of the norms of European settler colonialism. Examining institutionalized racism through a mix of 3D photographic scans and vivid dramatizations, this work questions the contemporary act of disposing historical artifacts as quick fixes, proposing the political potential of adding rather than removing. 2019, 7 min. View excerpt.

Mino Bimaadiziwin
Directed by Shane McSauby (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians)

A trans Anishinaabe man meets a young Anishinaabe woman who pushes him to reconnect with their culture. 2017, 10 min. View excerpt.
 
The Moon and the Night
Directed by Erin Lau (Kanaka Maoli)

Set in rural Hawaii, a Native Hawaiian teenage girl must confront her father after he enters her beloved pet in a dogfight. 2018, 19 min. View excerpt.

Shinaab II
Directed by Lyle Michell Corbine, Jr. (Bad River Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians)

A young man seeks to honor the memory of his late father in a film that looks at Ojibwe ideas surrounding death and mourning. 2019, 6 min.

Viva Diva
Directed by Daniel Flores (Yaqui)

This road trip movie follows Rozene and Diva as they make their way down to Guadalajara for their gender affirmation surgeries. 2017, 15 min. View excerpt.
 
Dig It If You Can
Directed by Kyle Bell (Creek-Thlopthlocco Tribal Town)

An insightful portrait of the self-taught artist and designer Steven Paul Judd (Kiowa), whose satirical manipulations of pop culture for an Indigenous audience are gaining a passionate, mass following as he realizes his youthful dreams. 2016, 18 min. View excerpt.

Postcommodity’s Each Branch Determined, 2017. Photo courtesy ImagineNATIVE.

Virtual Reality: 2167 Indigital Space

When: Saturday, March 21, 2020, @ 11am-4pm

Price: Free

Where: Star Tribune Foundation Art Lab

Experience virtual reality works that envision life in an Indigenous future. Featuring Blueberry Pie Under A Martian Sky by Scott Benesiinaabandan (Anishinabe), Each Branch Determined by Postcommodity (Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist), The Hunt by Danis Goulet (Cree/Métis), and Honour Dance by Kent Monkman (Cree).

Commissioned and produced in 2019 by Toronto International Film Festival, ImagineNATIVE, Pinnguaq, and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. 

Jessie Adler’s Boxers of Brule, 2019. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.

Shorts: Revitalization

When: Saturday, March 21, 2020, @7pm

Price: $10 ($8 for Walker members, students, and seniors)

Where: Walker Cinema

Three powerful short films portray personal stories of healing through cultural revitalization. Digital video, 62 min.

Isabelle’s Garden
Directed by Jeffrey Palmer (Kiowa)

This uplifting film tells the story of a community coming together, led by a young Choctaw girl and her garden. 2015, 9 min. View here.
 
Boxers of Brule 
Directed by Jessie Adler and Tracy Rector (Choctaw/Seminole)

A 23-year-old Lakota woman forms a boxing team for young girls to battle depression and addiction, in honor of her best friend who was lost to suicide. Building their strength together, the preteen girls of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe of South Dakota find power in sisterhood. 2015, 9 min. View excerpt.

Fast Horse 
Directed by Alexandra Lazarowich(Cree) 

An intimate look at riders of the Indian Relay, North America’s original extreme sport of bareback horse racing. 2018, 14 min. View here.

A conversation follows. 

Syd Beane’s Ohiyesa: The Soul of an Indian, 2018. Photo courtesy Vision Maker Media.

Ohiyesa: The Soul of an Indian

Directed by Syd Beane (Flandreau Santee Sioux) and Dakota Eastman Productions

When: Friday, March 27, 2020, @ 7pm

Price: $10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)

Where: Walker Cinema

In this deeply personal film, historian Kate Beane follows the journey of her relative Ohiyesa (Charles Eastman) from his traditional Santee Dakota childhood in Minnesota to his celebrated national success as a physician, prolific author, and lecturer on Native life and issues in the early 1900s. 2018, digital video, 57 min. 

Post-show conversation with Kate Beane (Flandreau Santee Sioux and Muskogee Creek).

View trailer

Closing Night

Jeff Barnaby’s Blood Quantum, 2019. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.

Blood Quantum

Directed by Jeff Barnaby (Mi’gmaq)

When: Saturday, March 28, 2020, @ 7pm

Price: $10 ($8 Walker members, students, and seniors)

Where: Walker Cinema

Born from prophecy, a zombie apocalypse rages on the Red Crow Indian Reservation in the 1980s, where an Indian police chief confronts an onslaught of gory attacks by the undead—yet those with Indigenous blood are strangely the only ones immune. 2019, Canada, English/Mi’gmag, DCP, 96 min. 

View trailer

Films Playing throughout

Erica Tremblay’s Little Chief, 2019. Photo courtesy the filmmaker.

INDIgenesis: GEN 3 Playlist curated by Missy Whiteman
March 12–31, Free
Bentson Mediatheque
Looping on Thursday, March 26, 4–9 pm

Shásh Jaa’ (Bears Ears)
Directed by Angelo Baca (Hopi/Diné)

An award-winning short documentary tells the story of five tribes (Navajo, Ute, Ute Mountain Ute, Hopi, and Zuni) fighting to save their sacred homeland from natural resource extraction by making 1.9 million acres of Utah land a national monument. 2016, 23 min. View Trailer.

Ya’at’eeh Abini (Good Morning)
Directed by Morningstar Angeline (Navajo/Blackfoot/Mexican)

Crystal is haunted by her father’s death from a global virus that has ravaged her native Navajo Nation. Under constant surveillance from an unknown military, she must learn to embrace her visions, memories, and dreams to both survive and rediscover what may be left of the world. 2019, 12 min.
 
Out of Nothing
Directed by Alexandra Lazarowich (Cree)

According to their creation myth, the Shinnecock are “the human children of the goddess who descended from the sky.” Only a few miles away from the Shinnecock Nation in Long Island, New York, scientists from around the world conduct experiments to explore the beginnings of the universe. Drawing parallels between the Big Bang and the creation story, Out of Nothing explores our endless fascination with where we come from. 2018, 15 min.

I Am Me
Directed by Jazmine Smith (Cree)

Jazmine grew up in Saskatchewan as a boy who felt out of place…until discovering makeup, which helped her transition and begin her journey into womanhood. I Am Me is a candid story of acceptance, self-love, and jewelry. 2018, 4 min. View here.

Little Chief
Directed by Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga/Wyandotte Nations) 

The lives of a Native woman and a nine-year-old boy intersect over the course of a school day on a reservation in Oklahoma. 2020, 12 min.

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