Check link below for details of performances at la Casita at the Lincoln Center August 26th and NMAI on August 28th.

Free and open to the public!
http://www.lincolncenter.org/show_events_list.asp?eventcode=-59133

10 August 2007. Albuquerque, NM: At 1:30 pm, Tuesday afternoon, August 21, 2007

Nine short films by Navajo directors throughout the Navajo Nation will screen at the Ojo Encino Chapter House in the Eastern Navajo Agency. Nanobah Becker, the director of the Sundance Film Festival short “Conversion,” assembled the screening for the community. Her film was shot on location in Ojo Encino in 2005 and makes its premiere in the community on that day.

“This is the first screening of its kind that I know of and highlights the emergence of a burgeoning cinematic movement coming out of the Navajo Nation,” says Becker. “I put together this event to celebrate this community and Navajo film. It’s an exciting time to be a filmmaker from the Navajo Nation.”

The films include:

CONVERSION 9 min. by Nanobah Becker (Ojo Encino)—1950. Christian missionaries make a catastrophic visit to a Navajo family. Navajo with English subtitles.

A MINOR DISTURBANCE 4 min. by Blackhorse Lowe (Nenahnezad)—Music video for the Brooklyn-based band The Dust Dive.

GRACE 11 min. by Darwyn Roanhorse (Tohatchi)— A restless young woman, at first drawn to compete with an older woman, soon understands that she can learn from her rival. English and Navajo.

SHARE THE WEALTH 8 min. by Bennie Klain (Tonalea)—A Native woman on an urban street encounters stereotyped misunderstanding in this poignant drama and ironic parable.

SA’AH 20 min. by Sarah Del Seronde (Tuba City)—The echoes of a Diné medicine man reveal the meaning of Diné philosophy, which ensures the Navajo’s path to Sa’ah Naghái Bik’eh Hózhóón (Walking in Beauty into Old Age). Documentary. English and Navajo.

HORSE YOU SEE 7 min. 30 sec. by Melissa Henry (Churchrock)— Meet Ross, a horse from the Navajo reservation. Hear his story and share his thoughts as he explains the very essence of being a horse. Navajo with English subtitles.

FEMALE RAIN-NILTS’A BI’ÁÁD 2 min. by Velma Craig (Fort Defiance)—In a piece based on a poem by Navajo writer Laura Tohe, the filmmaker expresses her love of the Navajo language. English and Navajo.

MARBLE GANSTA 4 min. by Shelby Ray (Flagstaff)—A young girl wakes from a nightmarish future where skateboarding is illegal, only to be confronted by her greatest fear.

DEEP THOUGHT 2 min. 30 sec. by Allison Tachine (Torreon)—16mm experimental short.

D.C. NAVAJO 10 min. by Shonie De La Rosa (Kayenta)—A graphic artist tries to collect his pay from the Navajo Nation Washington, D.C. office.

Many of these filmmakers are quite accomplished and will be on hand to present their films along with some actors and crew.

Elders and youth are especially encouraged to come. There will be door prizes for those in attendance. This is a FREE event.

The National Museum of the American Indian’s Film and Video Center invites filmmakers ages 2-25 to create a two-minute short film that illustrates what giving thanks means to them. For instance are there other celebrations besides Thanksgiving where you give thanks? What times of year are you thankful? Are there special days or times of the year when you show it? Are you thankful everyday? What are you thankful for? Your family? Special foods? Gatherings? Certain seasonal activities? When are they? What happens at them? How does your community show thanks? How do you express your appreciation? Show us how you express your appreciation through your short film!

We are looking for all types of films—narrative (fiction), documentary (non-fiction), experimental, etc.—you may submit multiple entries but each entry must be two minutes or shorter in length. Films selected will be shown during the month of November by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. Entries must be received by October 1, 2007. Entries become the property of the National Museum of the American Indian and will not be returned.

For information on terms and conditions and how to obtain an entry form please contact Film and Video Program Assistant Sierra Ornelas at ornelass@si.edu or call (202) 633–6695 or visit us at www.nativenetworks.si.edu.

Thanks and we look forward to seeing your work. Please send 2 copies of your entry to:

By FedEx or UPS: National Museum of the American Indian Film and Video Center Attn: Sierra Ornelas 4th Street and Independence Ave, SW Washington, DC 20024 (202) 633-6695

By USPS: National Museum of the American Indian Film and Video Center 4th Street and Independence Ave, SW MRC 590, PO Box 37012 Washington, DC 20013-701 2

Deadline to submit: August 31, 2007, 5:00 pm

The 6th Annual Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival (WAFF), November 15-18, 2007, invites you to submit your film or video for consideration for inclusion at this year’s fest.

One of North America’s largest totally-free indigenous film and video festivals, WAFF promises to host another great series of screenings, workshops and events.

Submissions are now being accepted in eight categories. Please note that WAFF charges no submission fee. For submission forms and guidelines or more information, visit www.aboriginalfilmfest.org or contact Rick Harp, WAFF Joint Artistic Director at 204-880-5381 or info@aboriginalfilmfest.org .

Brett Graham is a really nice guy who was willing to sponsor me (Maria) as a Fulbright scholar while he was head of the Toi Maori programme at Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland New Zealand. In 2005 he earner his Doctorate from the Univeristy of Auckland, the same year I earned my MFA. Unlike me, Brett is a world-reknowned sculptor whose work, “embraces Maori and other indigenous peoples’ histories, critiquing and exploring issues relating to cultural inequities of the past and present within New Zealand and the wider Pacific.”

Of course he is Indigenous! Otherwise NAICA wouldn’t be interested.

Anyway, Brett is of Ngati Koroki Kahukura and Pakeha (European) descent. He’s an awesome guy who answers random emails from strange Puerto Rican girls. I’ve wanted to do a huge piece on his work and that of Ralph Hotere for many years. Perhapos one day soon we will get to screen Merata Mita’s documentary on Hotere and have an in-depth interview with Dr. Graham in which he gives NAICA readers a much needed primer on contemporary Maori art practice as well as what’s going on in the South Pacific art world. Let me tell you there is a alot going on, but it’d be better for someone from there to tell you. Instead of me coming off as a know it all (I almost do, but not quite!).

What I can tell you is that Dr. Graham was invited by International director/curator Rob Storr to show a colloaborative installation piece during the Venice Biennale. Read the press release for further details and check out out his website: www.brettgraham.co.nz

NZ ARTISTS, DR BRETT GRAHAM AND RACHAEL RAKENA, MAKE HISTORY IN ITALY AT THE VENICE BIENNALE 2007

New Zealand may not be formally represented at the world’s leading art event the Venice Biennale, which opens this week, but an exhibition of New Zealand art opens in the collateral events section of the Biennale on Friday.

The sculptural and video installation, Aniwaniwa, was personally selected by the Biennale’s 2007 International Director-Curator, Robert Storr from hundreds of proposals from around the world. It is the first time in New Zealand history that New Zealand artists will exhibit in the collateral events section. This exciting venture may open doors for other New Zealand artists to exhibit in this section of the Biennale.

Artists Dr Brett Graham and Rachael Rakena, along with a small support team, are in the process of installing Aniwaniwa in a building they say could have been purpose designed for the exhibition. The venue, Magazzini del Sale, is situated on the edge of the canal and is of a perfect scale to hold the five carved vessels ‘wakahuia’ each 2.5 metres wide. The vessels, containing large video screens and speakers, fill the space - visitors to the exhibition will be immersed in the audio-visual installation viewing the work from mattresses laid out on the floor like a marae.

The video, which tells the story of Horahora, a village on the Waikato River where Brett Graham’s father was born, was submerged under water when the Karapiro Dam was formed in 1947. It is accompanied by a soundtrack featuring two of Maoridom’s most established and celebrated singers, Whirimako Black and Deborah Wai Kapohe, alongside renowned electronic musician, Paddy Free. Whirimako Black is to sing at the formal launching of the exhibition on Friday.

Contemporary Maori artists Graham and Rakena are well positioned to represent New Zealand at Venice. Both have solid international exhibition track records and they represented New Zealand in the Sydney Biennale in 2006, with another work UFOB – which was highly acclaimed and popular when shown at the recent survey exhibition of contemporary art at City Gallery Wellington.

The artists and the curators are excited about the scale, theme and nature of Aniwaniwa with the Italian curators saying that the work will touch and engage both Italians and the international audience. While it is a specific local story, it has broad global, cultural and environmental references. Exploring the idea of submersion as a metaphor for cultural loss, it examines themes highly pertinent to both the slowly sinking Italian city of Venice and atolls in the Pacific endangered by global warming and environmental change

The wakahuia are covered in a coral pattern referencing both the reef islands of the Pacific the legend of Tangaroa as the originator of carving. According to legend the hero Ruatepupuke had to travel underwater to retrieve the art of whakairo from Tangaroa’s house.

The Venice Biennale is the world’s oldest and most prestigious art exhibition, founded in 1895, it attracts the international art press, collectors, critics, artists, and curators in a way no other similar arts event does. The involvement of the two respected Italian co-curators, and in particular the Venice based curator Camilla Seibezzi has provided direct connections to the influential art market and an ability to leverage local contacts to generate maximum interest and attendance.

The launch of the exhibition on Friday will mark the culmination of a year’s work and six months of tough fund-raising. In addition to a grant for research given by Nga Pae o te Maramatanga, the National Institute of Research Excellence for Maori Development and Advancement, Massey University and Te Wananga o Aotearoa have contributed to the development of the work and the staging of the exhibition. Creative New Zealand recently gave a grant towards the project and other significant support has come from Sir Paul Reeves as patron, Te Puni Kokiri, and Saatchi & Saatchi worldwide CEO Kevin Roberts and his wife Rowena, have contributed financially as well as providing creative marketing support to the project team. Sponsorship has been raised in Italy for the wine and from leading Italian fashion house Byblos. Some $40,000 has also been raised through public donations and the sale of digital prints from the video. Many essential design, legal and media services have been provided.

A publication about the project featuring essays by academic media expert Sean Cubitt and Jonathan Mane-Wheoki, Director of Art and Collection Services at Te Papa, will also be launched at the opening. Mane-Wheoki describes Aniwaniwa as “a visual and aural lament, a multi-layered entity that speaks of forced migration, of cultural loss, of memory and nostalgia”. In his essay he also draws attention to the links between Maori and the people of Venice which date back to the Second World War.

New Zealanders who would like to support the project are invited to purchase a still print from the video available at a special price or to make a donation to MANGOROA-ANIWANIWA Project Trustees Limited - either by direct debit to account 12-3209-0210731-00 or send a cheque to PO Box 6357, Wellington. The video stills can be viewed online at www.bartleyandcompanyart.co.nz.

Aniwaniwa is officially listed on the Biennale website: http://www.labiennale.org/en/art/exhibition/en/76188.html

Another site documents the project and has images of the work arriving in Venice and the beautiful location:
http://aniwaniwa.blogspot.com/

Four Sheets to the Wind, a feature by Sterlin Harjo (Seminole/Creek), will screen at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the George Gustav Heye Center, in New York on Thursday, July 12 at 6 p.m. and on Saturday, June 14 at 1 p.m. Four Sheets to the Wind is presented by the museum’s Film and Video Center (FVC) in celebration of the 20th anniversary of Renew Media, the prominent media artist fellowship organization. On Saturday, June 14, the screening will be preceded by a program of works by recent Renew Media Fellows: Nanobah Becker (Navajo), Dante Cerano (P’urhepecha), Pedro Daniel López (Tzotzil), and Larry Blackhorse Lowe (Navajo). The screenings will be followed with an onstage discussion with director Sterlin Harjo and producer Chad Burris (Chickasaw).
All screenings are free, but reservations are recommended. Call (212) 514-3737 or email fvc@si.edu for reservations.

For more details, visit www.nativenetworks.si.edu or www.redesindigenas.si.edu.
Called an “enchanting and decidedly idiosyncratic” film, whose transcendent story is “in the best tradition of coming-of-age films” by The Hollywood Reporter, “Four Sheets to the Wind” tells the story of Cufe Smallhill (Cody Lightning). When he finds his father dead beside a bottle of pills, Cufe fulfills his promise to sink the body in the family pond. A fake funeral, held for the community, brings together a family that has drifted apart. Wondering if there is more to life than what’s on offer in his small home town, Cufe heads for the city of Tulsa with his sister Miri (Tamara Podemski), and explores his new possibilities with Miri’s neighbor, the lovable Francie (Laura Bailey).
“Four Sheets to the Wind” premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, and screened during the Sundance Institute at BAM program on June 4. At Sundance, Tamara Podemski (Saulteaux) won a Special Jury Award “for a fully realized physical and emotional turn” as Miri Smallhill. Sterlin Harjo is a 2004 Sundance Institute Annenberg Fellow, a 2006 Renew Media Fellow, and the 2006 winner of the Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Award for Narrative Film.
A not-for-profit organization established in 1990 by the Rockefeller Foundation, Renew Media fosters independent artistic expression by supporting the creation, dissemination and public awareness of independent media in all forms. More than 30 Renew Media Arts Fellows have screened their work at the National Museum of the American Indian.
Located in New York City and Washington, D.C., the National Museum of the American Indian’s Film and Video Center is an international leader in the presentation of indigenous film and video productions. National and international programs include the biennial Native American Film and Video Festival, the annual Native Cinema Showcase in Santa Fe, and free screenings daily for children and for general audiences. FVC serves as an information resource for all types of Native media.
The Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian’s George Gustav Heye Center is located at One Bowling Green in New York City, across from Battery Park. The museum is free and open every day from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Thursdays until 8 p.m. Call (212) 514-3700 for general information and (212) 514-3888 for a recording about the museum’s public programs. By subway, the museum may be reached by the 1 to South Ferry, the 4 or 5 to Bowling Green or the R or W to Whitehall Street. i

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Longviews: Whole Lotta Somethin’ Goin’ Down

Sunday, June 3rd, 2007

photo: m colon
my goodness summer does inspire visits to the ole nyc.

it also spawns sidewalk dining, really short shorts-the kind flat and flabby asses hang out of-the likes of which i witnessed at sunday brunch with Pod(cast)emski & Harjo, a classical guitar duo the likes of Medesky & Wood-but Native, and cultural events, lots of them. i digress, of course, because this is a Longviews joint and digressions are our signature.
yes there are things to do in nyc if you’re not broke or dead! too many for one lil ole naica editor to attend, but maybe one of you Longviews listeners would go in my stead? then you can report back and i won’t feel bad that i couldn’t be there or had to choose one event over another as they are all credibly portentous and should be attended in earnest by myself, but such is my one shot existence…yes, those cultural events i mentioned:

The Harj at BAM, June 4, 2007, 6pm-ish: www.bam.org

Alexi at Barnes and Noble Union Sq, June 4, 2007,7pm-ish: www.fallsapart.com/schedule.html

Native Cinema in New York, June 5, 2007, 7pm on the dot: www.nmai.si.edu

Podemski at the Living Room, June 6, 2007, 11pm-ish: http://www.livingroomny.com

Eagle vs Shark advanced screenings in nyc, June 12, 13, 14 2007: to download passes http://www.eaglevsshark.net

Flight of the Conchords, June 13 and 14, 2007, 7pm, Gramercy Theatre: tickets SOLD OUT (sure to be an Indie Fuck Fest!).

in this week’s podcast we regurgitate the above mentioned items, and more. then we careen into pretentiously academian discourse regarding the required genre “Native Cinema.” then we re-live our mortifying lack of googling before going into an interview, though that can also fuck you over with misinformation and/or reveal one’s functioning illiteracy status (like Renee confusing “gonzo journalism” with “gaucho journalism.”) Then we say some other stuff i can’t remember which will have me downloading my own stupid-facted podcast.

c’est la internet.

oui oui

 the big to do [32:15m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (90)

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"Definitions of the Exotic"
A solo exhibition by artist, Erica Lord

Art Talk: Friday, June 1, 12-1pm
National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution

Reception:	Friday, June 1, 6-8pm
American Indian Community House Gallery

Gallery Talk: Saturday, June 2, 2-3pm
American Indian Community House Gallery

Definitions of the Exotic is a digital media exhibition of photography
and
video, by artist, Erica Lord (Athabaskan / Inupiaq).  In this
exhibition,
Lord reclaims stereotypes of gender and cultural identity.  She uses
herself
as the subject to be visually altered and changed.  The show will
include
images from the Tanning Series, in which she photographed parts of her
body
with text that was imprinted onto her skin by using a tanning bed.  The
letters that were placed on her skin to block the uv-rays in order to
leave
text, read, “I Tan To Look More Native,”  “Indian Looking,”
“Colonize Me,”
and “Half Breed.”

Media bombards the mainstream culture with misleading information that,
without critical thought, gives people false ideas about culture.
Exotic by
definition means, “belonging by nature or origin to another part of the
world; foreign; strangely different and fascinating.”  The definition
of
exotic has been implemented to the American Indian in media, such as
Hollywood film.  In, Definitions of the Exotic, Lord applies these
definitions to her body to take on the role of the exotic and re-define
herself.

- Sarah Sense (Chitimacha / Choctaw), Curator

www.aich.org

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