INAUGURAL BRATTLEBORO ROTARY
CLUB INTERNATIONAL (INDIAN) FILM &
FOOD FESTIVAL – 2009
5TH ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO ROTARY
CLUB INTERNATIONAL (NATIVE
AMERICAN) FILM & FOOD FESTIVAL – 2014
Outsourced
Monsoon
DOCUMENTARY:
Urban Rez
2ND ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO ROTARY
CLUB INTERNATIONAL (MEXICAN) FILM &
FOOD FESTIVAL – 2010
FEATURE FILM
Pow Wow Highway
SHORT FILM PROGRAM (56 min)
1. El armadillo fronterizo (“The Border
Armadillo”)
2. Iker pelos tiesos (“Iker Stiff Hairs)
3. El relato de Sam Brennan (“Sam
Brennan’s Story”)
4. Niña que espera (“Little Girl Waiting”)
5. Xáni Xépika (“Lazybones”)
6. La leche y el agua (“Milk and water”)
FEATURE FILM (100 min):
Espiral
3RD ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO ROTARY
CLUB INTERNATIONAL (MEXICAN) FILM &
FOOD FESTIVAL – 2011
SHORT FILM PROGRAM (62 min)
1. Luna (Moon)
2. La Mina de Oro (The Gold Mine)
3. Miramelinda (Look at Me Beauty)
4. Moyana (Moyana)
5. La Nuera de Don Filemón (Don Filemon’s
Daughter in Law)
6. Firmes (Attention)
FEATURE FILM (87 min):
Una Pared Para Cecilia (A Wall for Cecillia)
4TH ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO ROTARY
CLUB INTERNATIONAL (NATIVE
AMERICAN) FILM & FOOD FESTIVAL – 2013
FEATURE FILMS
Smoke Signals
Skins
INAUGURAL BRATTLEBORO
ROTARY CLUB INTERNATIONAL
(INDIAN) FILM & FOOD FESTIVAL –
2009
Outsourced
Hello, Central, give me Bangalore
Release Date: Sep 28, 2007 • Ebert Rating: ***
By Roger Ebert
There is nothing in India more
mysterious than the lovely land
itself. The riot of colors, the
careless jumble of the cities, the
frequent friendliness and good
humor of a people who are so
different from us, except that,
often, they speak the same
language. More or less.
"Outsourced" begins with an American sent to India
to train the low-paid employees of a new call center
for his company, American Novelty Products. It
sells, he explains, "kitsch to redneck schmucks."
His Indian assistant asks him, "Excuse me. What is
'redneck'? What is 'kitsch'? What is 'schmuck'?" And
what are these products? American eagle
sculptures. Wisconsin cheesehead hats. Branding
irons for your hamburgers.
The American is named Todd (Josh Hamilton),
although everyone hears it wrong and calls him "Mr.
Toad." His assistant has a much more sensible
name, Purohit N. Virajnarianan (Asif Basra).
Although wages are low in India, Purohit will make
500,000 rupees as the new manager. That comes
out to about $11,000, enough for him to realize a
long-delayed marriage to his betrothed.
Todd is a stranger in a very strange land. Some of
his experience reminded me of my own at the
Calcutta and Hyderabad film festivals. He wildly
overtips a beggar woman at the airport. He finds
himself riding in one of those three-wheeled openair taxis. He makes the mistake of eating street
food. He encounters new definitions of the
acceptable (on a crowded bus, a young boy politely
stands up to offer Todd his seat, then sits back
down on his lap). He is constantly bombarded by
offers to go here, go there, buy this, see that.
Sometimes these offers are worth listening to, as
when they lead him to a charming rooming house.
And what about the call center itself? It looks like a
concrete-block storage hut, still under construction.
Inside, Purohit oversees 12 or 15 employees
struggling with customer complaints. Question: "I'm
ordering my American eagle from India?" Answer:
"It is not made here, sir. It is made in China."
Average length of a call, over 12 minutes, Todd's
instructions: Get it down to six. Impossible. He
starts with pep talks and lessons in pronunciation:
"Say you are in Chicago. Pronounce it sha-CAWga." They obediently repeat, "Shy-CALL-go." But
one employee seems ahead of the curve. This is
the beautiful, helpful Asha (Ayesha Dharker), who
you may have seen in the title role of "The Terrorist"
and the quite different role of Queen Jamillia in
"Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones."
She questions Todd during his classes, tells him he
needs to know more about India, has a smile that
dismisses his doubts. She becomes his teacher on
such mysteries as Kali, the goddess of destruction
("Sometimes it is good to destroy. Then things can
start again.") And of course they fall in love,
although it is not to be, because she was promised
in an arranged marriage at the age of 4. "Then why
are we here?" he asks her on a business trip, as
they debate a position they find in a book at the
Kama Sutra Hotel. "This is like a trip to Goa," she
says, referring to the idyllic southern province of
India, formerly Portuguese. In her mind, before a
lifelong arranged marriage, one trip to Goa is
permitted.
"Outsourced" is not a great movie, and maybe
couldn't be this charming if it was. It is a film
bursting with affection for its characters and for
India. It never pushes things too far, never stoops to
cheap plotting, is about people learning to really see
one another. It has a fundamental sweetness and
innocence. Josh Hamilton, a veteran of more than
40 movies, finds a defining role here, as an
immensely amiable man. To look upon Ayesha
Dharker is to like her. And in a time when the word
"chemistry" is lightly bandied about, what they
generate is the real thing. As in most Indian movies,
there is no explicit sex, but because this is a U.S.
production, there is some kissing and waking up
together under the sheets, and wow, it beats
anything in the Kama Sutra.
Cast & Credits: Todd Anderson: Josh
Hamilton Asha: Ayesha Dharker Purohit N.
Virajnarianan: Asif Basra Dave: Matt
Smith Veteran tourist: Larry Pine ShadowCatcher
Entertainment presents a film directed John
Jeffcoat. Written by George Wing and Jeffcoat.
Running time: 103 minutes. Rated PG-13 (for some
sexual content). Opening today at local theaters.
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article
?AID=/20070927/REVIEWS/709270303/1023
Deshpande (Bhumika, Hech Majhe Maher, Akka)
The film was co-produced by Dileep Singh
Rathore and his OTR Productions who produced
the internationally acclaimed Maya (2001) and the
Oscar nominated short The Little Terrorist (2004).
Synopsis:
Mumbai, India -- Present Day. The sweltering dead
heat of the Indian summer. The only hope for relief
are the elusive monsoon rains, already 3 weeks
delayed. Into this sweaty inferno comes Govinda, a
hotshot Californian Cardiologist and conditioned
scientist who has journeyed back to his native
country to treat his father's ailing health. Govinda
despises India almost as much as he does his
father who embraces it. It is dirty, disorganized,
superstitious and the place where his beloved wife
was killed in a tragic accident the year before. Much
to his frustration, his father, a devout Hindu Brahmin
and the hard headed patriarch of the family, refuses
medical treatment claiming that only God can heal
him. As the tension between father and son grows,
Govinda gets drawn back into the mystery
surrounding his wife's death stirring up old
skeletons that threaten to split the family apart
forever.
About the Film:
MONSOON is a 20 minute film shot on location in
and around Mumbai, India. It was made as part of
the graduate film production program at the
University of Southern California by graduates
Shyam Balsé (writer/director) and Joseph Itaya
(producer) under the faculty supervision of the chair
of USC's film production program, Michael Taylor
(producer of Phenomenon and Bottle Rocket). It
was shot over 8 days in early December 2005 using
a primarily Indian cast and crew, many of whom
work in the Bollywood film and television industry.
Post production took place in Los Angeles,
California and was completed July 2006. The film
stars a combination of new rising Indian talent and
award winning Bollywood veterans. The lead role of
Govinda is played by newcomer Bhanu Uday
(Special Squad, Return to Rajapur) who only a few
years before graduated from the top dramatic
academy in India, the National School of Drama.
The second lead is played by the great Ravi
Baswani (Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Yun Hota To Kya
Hota), a well known and loved character actor and
director in India. The cast is rounded out with the
supporting performance by one of India's most
respected and acclaimed Marathi actresses whose
work appears in over 50 feature films, Sulabha
2ND ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO
ROTARY CLUB INTERNATIONAL
(MEXICAN) FILM & FOOD FESTIVAL –
2010
SHORT FILM PROGRAM (56 min)
1. El armadillo fronterizo (“The Border
Armadillo”)
An ingenious armadillo leaves his wife and rapidly
multiplying family at home
and heads out in search of food, but finds trouble
instead. (10 min)
2. Iker pelos tiesos (“Iker Stiff Hairs)
Iker thinks that everyone looks like an animal. He
would have liked to be a bear,
like his dad, but no he is just like his grandfather, a
porcupine. (10 min)
3. El relato de Sam Brennan (“Sam Brennan’s
Story”)
Sam is a boy who dreams of fantastic voyages
while he works in his father¹s
tavern. One day he gets the chance to see if
adventure is as he imagined it. (6 min)
4. Niña que espera (“Little Girl Waiting”)
Angélica, an eight-year-old girl, runs up to Carlos
and Ana in the airport
insisting that they are her parents. They deny it.
Who is right? (11 min)
5. Xáni Xépika (“Lazybones”)
A young boy’s quest to prove himself worthy of his
bride. (7 min)
6. La leche y el agua (“Milk and water”)
A woman tries to get back her only companion in
life: a cow. (12 min)
FEATURE FILM (100 min)
Espiral
Intensa historia de amor que
refleja
la
realidad
de
muchos
inmigrantes
quienes
buscando
una
mejor
vida
termina
destruyendo lo que ellos
mas quieren; sus propias
familias. Santiago y Macario
son forzados a salir de
México en busca de un
mejor futuro dejando atrás
las mujeres de sus vidas,
Diamantina y Araceli tienen que luchar para
sobrevivir. Cuando los hombres retornan a la villa
se encuentran con que todo ha cambiado y que
será muy difícil recuperar lo que dejaron atrás. El
papel de la mujer y su lucha permanente por
mantener sus familias tomando las riendas de sus
vidas a la par de un hombre.
Nominada como
Mejor Film en el Festival de Cartagena 2009.
With the desire to improve their lives, the men of
Huajuan de Leon emigrate without realizing that
they are destroying that which they want to save
most, their families. This is the story of Diamantina
and Araceli, two young women from the Oaxacan
Mixtec who watch their men, Santiago and Macario,
leave for the States in search of a better life.
Santiago tries to raise money in order to marry
Diamantina, whose father abides by the tradition of
a marriage dowry. Macario is looking to alleviate his
familys poverty. When the men return to the village
they try to recover what they had left behind, but
things are no longer the same. Spiral is a
generational story about patriarchal society, the
power of community and family . A love story that
explores with beautiful cinematography and
complex characters the archaic social and moral
codes that still prevail in the small towns of Mexico.
Nominated for the 2009 Cartagena Film Festival
Golden India Catalina Award for Best Film
3RD ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO
ROTARY CLUB INTERNATIONAL
(MEXICAN) FILM & FOOD FESTIVAL –
2011
SHORT FILM PROGRAM (62 min)
7. Luna (Moon)
A little girl named Zoe discovers a beautiful
moon in the middle of a dark, mechanized
world.
(8 min)
8. La Mina de Oro (The Gold Mine)
Betina finds love over the Internet. She leaves
her world behind to meet her virtual fiancé.
(10 min)
9. Miramelinda (Look at Me Beauty)
Don Jorge Rivas’ daily existence is populated
by ghostsfrom his chronicles and his own past.
(13 min)
10. Moyana (Moyana)
Juanelo lives completely alienated by television.
During a power failure, start a new adventure
in a world full of mind-blowing scenery and
characters as charming as dangerous. (11min)
11. La Nuera de Don Filemón (Don Filemon’s
Daughter in Law)
Don Filemón will have to get used to living with
Remigia, his daughter-in-law, who can't stand
him, until she discovers something about Don
Filemón that makes her love him like her own
father.
(10 min)
12. Firmes (Attention)
Over a long formal ceremony, a private tries to
stand to attention despite the many
obstacles he faces. (10 min)
FEATURE FILM (87 min)
Una Pared Para Cecilia
(A Wall for Cecillia)
A free-spirit from Tijuana
and a troubled young boy
are brought together under
unusual circumstances,
yet forge a bond that will
help them both endure in
troubled times. At first
frightened when she is
attacked by a 10-year old
child, compassionate Cecilia recognizes the
desperation faced by her impoverished assailant,
and becomes his faithful guardian. Only by learning
to rely on each other will these two lost souls find
the courage to face life when it seems that all hope
is lost. (87 min)
4TH ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO
ROTARY CLUB INTERNATIONAL
(NATIVE AMERICAN) FILM & FOOD
FESTIVAL – 2013
Smoke Signals
BY ROGER EBERT / July 3, 1998
``It's a good day to be indigenous!'' the
reservation radio deejay tells his
American Indian listeners as ``Smoke
Signals'' opens. We cut to the station's
traffic reporter, who scrutinizes an
intersection that rarely seems to be
used. ``A big truck just went by,'' he
announces. Later in the film, we will
hear several choruses of a song about John
Wayne's false teeth.
``Smoke Signals'' comes billed as the first feature
written, directed, co-produced and acted by
American Indians. It hardly seems necessary to
even announce that: The film is so relaxed about its
characters, so much at home in their world, that we
sense it's an inside job. Most films about Native
Americans have had points to make and scores to
settle, like all those earnest 1950s white films about
blacks. Blaxploitation broke the ice and liberated
unrehearsed black voices, and now here are two
young Indians who speak freshly, humorously and
for themselves.
The film opens in Idaho on a significant day: the
Fourth of July, 1976. It's significant not only for
America but for the infant Thomas Builds-the-Fire,
who is saved by being thrown from an upper
window when his house burns down at 3 a.m. He is
caught in the arms of Arnold Joseph (Gary Farmer),
a neighbor with a drinking problem, who is
eventually thrown out by his wife (Tantoo Cardinal)
and goes to live in Phoenix. He leaves behind his
son Victor Joseph (Adam Beach).
And then, 20 years later, word comes that Arnold
has died. Victor has a deep resentment against his
father, but thinks he should go to Phoenix and pick
up his ashes. He has no money for the journey, but
Thomas Builds-the-Fire (Evan Adams) does--and
offers to buy the bus tickets if Victor will take him
along on the trip. That would be a big concession
for Victor, who is tall and silent and has never much
liked the skinny, talkative Thomas. But he has no
choice. And as the movie settles into the rhythms of
a road picture, the two characters talk, and the
dialogue becomes the heart of the movie.
``Smoke Signals'' was written by Sherman Alexie,
based on his book ``The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven.'' He has a good ear for speech,
and he allows his characters to refer to the real
world, to TV and pop culture and the movies. (The
reserved Victor, impatient with Thomas's chatter,
accuses him of having learned most of what he
knows about Indians by watching ``Dances With
Wolves,'' and advises him to spend more time
``looking stoic.'') There are references to Gen.
Custer and the U.S. Cavalry, to John Wayne and to
U.S. policies toward Indians over the years, but
``Smoke Signals'' is free of the oppressive weight of
victim culture; these characters don't live in the past
and define themselves by the crimes committed
against their people. They are the next generation; I
would assign them to Generation X if that didn't limit
them too much.
If they are the future, Arnold, the Gary
Farmer character, is the past. Victor nurses a
resentment against him, but Joseph is
understandably more open-minded, since the man
did, after all, save his life. There are a few
flashbacks to help explain the older man, and
although they're brief, they're strong and well done:
We see that Arnold is more complicated than his
son imagines, and able to inspire the respect of the
woman he was living with in Phoenix (Irene
Bedard).
``Smoke Signals'' is, in a way, a continuation of a
1989 movie named ``Powwow Highway,'' in which
Farmer starred as a huge, gentle, insightful man,
and A Martinez as more ``modern.'' It, too, was a
road movie, and it lived through its conversations.
To see the two movies side-by-side is to observe
how Native Americans, like all Americans, are not
exempt from the melting pot--for better and worse.
The director, Chris Eyre, takes advantage of the
road movie genre, which requires only a goal and
then permits great freedom in the events along the
way. The two men will eventually obtain the ashes,
we expect, and also some wisdom. Meanwhile, we
can watch them discover one another: the taciturn,
inward man who was abused as a child, and the
orphan who, it's true, seems to have gotten his
world view at secondhand through the media.
There's a particular satisfaction in listening to
people talk about what they know well and care
about. The subject isn't as important as the feeling.
Listen to them discuss the ins and outs of an Indian
specialty known as ``frybread,'' and you will sense
what they know about the world.
Skins
BY ROGER EBERT / October 18, 2002
"Skins" tells the story of two
brothers, both Sioux, one a cop,
one an alcoholic "whose mind
got short-circuited in Vietnam."
They live on the Pine Ridge
reservation, in the shadow of
Mount Rushmore and not far
from the site of the massacre at
Wounded Knee. America's
founding fathers were carved, the film informs us,
into a mountain that was sacred to the Sioux, and
that knowledge sets up a final scene of uncommon
power.
The movie is almost brutal in its depiction of life at
Pine Ridge, where alcoholism is nine times the
national average and life expectancy 50 percent.
Director Chris Eyre, whose previous film was the
much-loved "Smoke Signals" (1998), has turned
from comedy to tragedy and is unblinking in his
portrait of a community where poverty and despair
are daily realities.
Rudy Yellow Lodge (Eric Schweig), the policeman,
is well-liked in a job that combines law enforcement
with social work. His brother Mogie (Graham
Greene) is the town drunk, but his tirades against
society reveal the eloquence of a mind that still
knows how to see injustice. Mogie and his buddy
Verdell Weasel Tail (Gary Farmer) sit in the sun on
the town's main street, drinking and providing a
running commentary that sometimes cuts too close
to the truth.
Flashbacks show that both brothers were abused
as children, by an alcoholic father. Mogie probably
began life with more going for him, but Vietnam and
drinking have flattened him, and it's his kid brother
who wears the uniform and draws the paycheck.
Those facts are established fairly early, and we
think we can foresee the movie's general direction,
when Eyre surprises us with a revelation about
Rudy: He is a vigilante.
A man is beaten to death in an abandoned house.
Rudy discovers the two shiftless kids who did it,
disguises himself, and breaks their legs with a
baseball bat. Angered by white-owned businesses
across the reservation border that make big profits
selling booze to the Indians on the day the welfare
checks arrive, he torches one of the businesses-only to find he has endangered his brother's life in
the process. His protest, direct and angry, is as
impotent as every other form of expression seems
to be.
When "Skins" premiered at Sundance last January,
Eyre was criticized by some for painting a negative
portrait of his community.Justin Lin, whose "Better
Luck Tomorrow" showed affluent Asian-American
teenagers succeeding at a life of crime, was also
attacked for not taking a more positive point of view.
Recently the wonderful comedy "Barbershop" has
been criticized because one character does a comic
riff aimed at African-American icons.
In all three cases, the critics are dead wrong,
because they would limit the artists in their
community to impotent feel-good messages instead
of applauding their freedom of expression. In all
three cases, the critics are also tone-deaf, because
they cannot distinguish what the movies depict from
how they depict it. That is particularly true with
some of the critics of "Barbershop," who say they
have not seen the film. If they did, the audience's
joyous laughter might help them understand the
context of the controversial dialogue, and the way in
which it is answered.
"Skins" is a portrait of a community almost without
resources to save itself. We know from "Smoke
Signals" that Eyre also sees another side to his
people, but the anger and stark reality he uses here
are potent weapons. The movie is not about a crime
plot, not about whether Rudy gets caught, not about
how things work out. It is about regret. Graham
Greene achieves the difficult task of giving a
touching performance even though his character is
usually drunk, and it is the regret he expresses, to
his son and to his brother, that carries the movie's
burden of sadness. To see this movie is to
understand why the faces on Mount Rushmore are
so painful and galling to the first Americans. The
movie's final image is haunting.
5TH ANNUAL BRATTLEBORO
ROTARY CLUB INTERNATIONAL
(NATIVE AMERICAN) FILM & FOOD
FESTIVAL – 2014
modern and impatient - he's Type A - but as their
journey unfolds, he can begin to see the sense of it.
Anyone who can name his
1964 Buick "Protector" and
talk to it like a pony has a
philosophy we can learn
from. Philbert Bono is the
name of the philosopher. He
is a member of the Northern
Cheyenne tribe, and near
the beginning of "Powwow
Highway" he and a friend,
Buddy Red Bow, set out to
ride Protector from Lame Deer, Mont., to Sante Fe,
N. M.
Philbert is played by Gary Farmer, a tall, huge man
with a long mane of black hair and a gentle
disposition. He speaks softly and sees things with a
blinding directness. Buddy (A Martinez) is more
"modern," more political, angrier. Their friendship
has survived their differences.
They go by way of the Dakotas, because to Bono
the best way to get to a place is not always the
straightest way.
"Powwow Highway" is the story of their journey, and
in one sense it's a road movie and a buddy movie,
but in another sense it's a meditation on the way
American Indians can understand the land in terms
of space, not of time. Philbert never states it in so
many words, but it's clear he doesn't think of a trip
to Santa Fe in terms of hours or miles, but in terms
of the places he must visit between here and there
to make it into a journey and not simply the physical
relocation of his body.
The movie supplies a plot in order to explain why
the two Indians need to take their journey, but the
plot is the least interesting element of the film. It
involves a scheme against Buddy, who is a tribal
activist and opposes a phony land-rights grab that's
being directed at some Indian territories. His sister
is thrown into jail in Santa Fe, and he must go there
to bail her out, and that will get him out of Montana
at a crucial time. And so on.
The plot is not the point. What "Powwow Highway"
does best is to create two unforgettable characters
and give them some time together.
It places them within a large network of their Indian
friends so we get a sense of the way their
community still shares and thrives. As Philbert
points Protector east instead of south, as he visits
friends and sacred Indian places along the road, he
doesn't try to justify what he's doing. It comes from
inside. And it comes, we sense, from a very old
Indian way of looking at things. Buddy is much more
The movie develops a certain magical intensity
during the journey, and much of that comes from
the chemistry between the two lead actors.
The movie was shot entirely on location, and the set
decoration, I suspect, consists of whatever the
camera found in its way. (If this is not so, it is a
great tribute to the filmmakers, who made it seem
that way.) We visit trailer parks and dispossessed
suburbs and pool halls and conve nience stores.
We watch the dawn in more than one state, and we
get the sense of the life on the road in a way that is
both modern (highways, traffic signals) and timeless
(the oneness of the land and the journey). And
although I have made this all sound important and
mystical, "Powwow Highway" is at heart a comedy,
and even a bit of a thriller, although the way they
spring Buddy's sister from prison belongs to the
comedy and not the thriller.
The movie is based on a novel by David Seals,
which I have not read; the story resembles the tone
in some of W. P. Kinsella's stories about North
American Indians. In Buddy it shows the somewhat
fading anger of a man who once was a firebrand in
the American Indian Movement (he has a concise,
bitter speech about the programs "for" the Indians
that will be an education for some viewers). In
Philbert it finds a supplement to that anger in a man
whose sheer, unshakable serenity is a political
statement of its own.
One of the reasons we go to movies is to meet
people we have not met before. It will be a long time
before I forget Farmer, who disappears into the
Philbert role so completely we almost think he is
this simple, openhearted man - until we learn he's
an actor and teacher from near Toronto. It's one of
the most wholly convincing performances I've seen.
Most of the people who go to see "Powwow
Highway" will already have seen "Rain Man," the
box-office best seller. Will they notice how similar
the movies are in structure? Philbert does not have
any sort of mental handicap, as the man with autism
does in "Rain Man," but he has a similar, absolutely
direct simplicity. Both characters state facts.
They catalog the obvious. Deep beneath the
simplicity of Philbert's statements is a serene
profundity (we cannot be quite sure what lies at the
bottom of the autistic's statements). In both movies
the other man - younger, ambitious, impatient learns from the older. Meanwhile, in both movies,
the men become friends while they drive in ancient
Buicks down the limitless highways of America.
— Roger Ebert, April 28, 1989
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/powwow
-highway-1989
AWARDS
— Sundance Film Festival — Filmmakers
Trophy – Dramatic (Jonathan Wacks)
— Native American Film Festival – Best Picture
(Jan Wieringa, George Harrison & Denis
O'Brien)
— Native American Film Festival – Best
Director (Jonathan Wacks)
— Native American Film Festival – Best Actor (A.
Martinez)
—
Urban Rez explores the controversial legacy and
modern-day repercussions of the Urban Relocation
Program (1952-1973), the greatest voluntary upheaval of
Native Americans during the 20th century. During the
documentary, dozens of American Indians representing
tribal groups from across the West recall their first-hand
experiences with relocation, including the early
hardships, struggles with isolation and racism.
Interviewees also speak about the challenges of
maintaining one's own tribal traditions — from language
to hunting — while assimilating into the larger society.
Actor, musician and Oglala Lakota member Moses
Brings Plenty narrates this insightful film about this
seldom-told chapter in American history.
The Voluntary Relocation Program, spanning from 19521973, was the greatest voluntary upheaval of Native
Americans during the 20th century. Urban Rez explores
the lasting legacy of the relocation policies that
encouraged Native Americans to leave their homelands
and relocate to urban areas across the country.
Urban Rez's unique approach to this historical reflection
of the Voluntary Relocation Program is interspersed with
modern-day analysis which makes clear that the program
that started over 60 years ago still has an effect in today's
world. Hosted by actor, musician, and Oglala Lakota
member Moses Brings Plenty, this insightful film shines
light on a seldom told chapter in American history.
From award-winning producer Lisa D. Olken and
director Larry T. Pourier (Lakota), the film features
personal stories from multiple tribal perspectives with
both urban- and reservation-based views. Olken, Pourier,
and the Urban Rez crew traveled to reservations and
urban areas to chronicle these stories that are very
different in nature from the stereotypical American
Indian narrative of land loss, poverty, and scant
resources.
"These are stories of tumultuous lives filled with both
opportunity and disappointment and that of identities lost
and reclaimed," commented Olken.
Interviewees speak about the wonderful opportunities
provided to them such as the work-education programs
but also of the challenges of maintaining their tribal
traditions, speaking their language, isolation, racism, and
being separated from family and friends.
2013 Winner
of the Heartland Chapter
Emmy Award
for Best
Cultural Documentary