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Actor Adam
Beach (Saulteaux) starred in 2007 in the HBO production
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, portraying the noted Native
medical doctor Charles Eastman. For this work, he has been nominated
for the 2008 Golden Globes Award for Best Performance by an Actor
in a Mini-Series or Motion Picture Production Made for Television
(an award by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association). He has
also been nominated for the 2008 Image Award for Outstanding Actor
in a Television Movie (awarded by the NAACP) and the 2008 NAMIC
Vision Award for Best Performance-Drama (awarded by the National
Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications).
In 2007 Beach received the Palm Springs International Film Festival's
Rising Star Award. For his portrayal of soldier Ira Hayes in Flags
of Our Fathers (director: Clint Eastwood), he was nominated
for the Broadcast Critics Association's 2007 Critics Choice Award
for Best Supporting Actor and for a 2006 Satellite Award (an award
of the International Press Association).
At the end of the 2008 season, Beach will complete his one-year
stint as Mohawk detective Chester Lake on the hit NBC series,
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
4/30/08
Nanobah Becker (Navajo)
has been selected for Project: Involve, a 9-month production and
professional development program of Film Independent in Los Angeles.
In 2007 Becker was featured in an interview with James Ponsoldt
published in Filmmaker Magazine. In 2006 she was one of 22 media
artists awarded a National Video Resources Media Arts Fellowship
to produce Full, a fiction film about a gay (nadleeh)
Navajo man who returns to the queer Native American nightlife
in Albuquerque after failing as a disc jockey in New York City.
8/03/07
Chad Burris
(Chickasaw) has been selected for the Sundance Institute's 2007
Producer Lab. Burris produced Four
Sheets to the Wind (director: Sterlin
Harjo), which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival,
and is currently producing a new feature film with director Blackhorse
Lowe.
8/08/07
Actress Tantoo
Cardinal has received the 2007 Sun Hill Award
for Excellence in Native American Filmmaking. The award, presented
biennially by the Sun Hill Foundation and the Harvard Film Archive,
honors significant contributions to the legacy of Native American
film. Previous honorees have been directors Chris Eyre and Zacharias
Kunuk.
1/12/08
Filmmaker Elizabeth
Day (Ojibwe) is one of 4 artists selected for a 2008 Bush
Fellowship in Media Arts. The Bush Foundation awards substantial
grants each year to up to 15 artists in various disciplines to
realize new projects. Day is an emerging filmmaker, born on the
Leech Lake Reservation and raised in Minneapolis, who is interested
in the connection between urban and reservation life. Her earlier
projects, including her most recent short Sunshine,
have received support from IFP Minnesota. Her project Beaded
Road (working title), with writer Winona
Wilms (Ojibwe), was selected for the 2006 Tribeca All Access
program.
8/12/08
Writer and actor Darrell Dennis (Shushwap)
has been selected for the Sundance Institute's 2008 Screenwriters
Lab for work on his screenplay for Tales of an Urban Indian,
a dark and irreverent comedy about the trials and tribulations
of a young First Nations man moving from the reserve to the city.
Dennis was nominated for the prestigious Dora Award for writing
for his one-man show with the same title, on which his screenplay
is based. A 5-day workshop at Sundance Resort in Utah, the Lab
is designed to provide independent filmmakers the opportunity
to work intensively on their scripts with the support of established
writers.
2/22/08
Director Chris Eyre
(Cheyenne/Arapaho) has been awarded a 2007 United States Artists
Fellowship. He is one of two Native American artists selected
since the founding of the program in 2006. Initially funded for
three years by a consortium of foundations-Ford, Rockefeller,
Prudential, and Rasmuson-the program annually provides $50,000
awards each to about 50 selected artists to enable them to focus
freely on their creative projects. Candidates for the prestigious
fellowship are proposed by nominators selected for their expertise
in the arts, and the winners are chosen by a peer-review panel.
Also in 2007 Eyre is one of 3 media artists selected for a Bush
Fellowship in Film/Media. Bush Artists Fellowships are given to
up to 15 artists per year in diverse disciplines, awarding sizable
grants for the development of new projects.
2/15/08
In 2006 Sterlin Harjo
(Creek/Seminole) was awarded the prestigious United States Artists
Fellowship, a program established in 2006 to select extraordinary
US artists in all disciplines. Harjo, one of 54 artists chosen
in the first year, is the first Native American artist selected.
This fellowship program has been initially funded by a consortium
of foundations-Ford, Rockefeller, Prudential, and Rasmuson. Candidates
for the fellowship are proposed by nominators selected for their
expertise in the arts, and the winners are chosen by a peer-review
panel. The purpose of the $50,000 award is to provide the selected
artists with enough income to be able to freely focus for a substantial
period of time on their creative projects.
Also in 2006 Harjo was awarded Tribeca All Access Program's top
Creative Promise Award and was selected for a National Video Resources
Media Arts Fellowship (now known as a Renew Media Arts Fellowship).
2/06/08
Director Melissa
Henry (Navajo) won an experimental award of $10,000 from
the 2007 New Visions/New Mexico Contract Awards for Blue Heeler,
about a Navajo sheep dog who loses his flock. In 2007 the New
Visions initiative provided 11 contracts worth $160,00 to winning
New Mexico-based producers and directors.
11/25/07
José Alfredo Jiménez
Pérez (Tzotzil) has been selected by Renew Media
for an award for his documentary project Acteal, 10 anos
de impunidad y quantos mas… (working title) about
the 1997 massacre of indigenous villagers in Acteal, Chiapas in
Mexico. Renew Media annually awards fellowships through a nomination
and selection process to approximately 14 film and video artists
and 6 new media artists in the United States and six media artists
in Mexico.
1/06/08
Terry Jones (Seneca) has been awarded the ABC/Disney Talent
Development Scholarship Grant Program award of $20,000 to develop
an individual film project in 2006 under the mentorship of experienced
professionals from the ABC/Disney studios. Jones, who has attended
Pace University in New York, is the producer of Casino Nation,
a documentary about the opening of two Las Vegas-style casinos
in New York State. He attended the IAIA's 2005 Summer Film and
Television Workshop, sponsored by ABC/Disney, the Kellogg Foundation,
and the National Museum of the American Indian.
10/30/05
Jennifer Kreisberg (Tuscarora) has received numerous awards
for her song "Have Hope," composed and performed for
the film Unnatural and Accidental (director: Carl Bessai).
She received the 2007 Genie Award for Achievement in Music - Original
Song, given by the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television for
outstanding achievement in Canadian film. She also received the
2007 Song of the Year Award from NAMMY (Native American Music
Awards) and the 2007 Independent Music Award in Film/TV.
In 2007 Kreisberg was also selected for a First People's Fund
Cultural Capital Grant and artist fellowships from the New England
Foundation for the Arts and the Connecticut Commission of Culture
and Tourism.
2/15/08
Producer Milt Lee (Cheyenne River Sioux) is one of 3 artists
selected for a 2007 Bush Fellowship in Film/Video. The Bush Foundation
awards substantial grants each year to up to 15 artists in various
disciplines to realize new projects. Lee has a 30-year career
as an independent radio producer and media maker, and with his
wife Jamie produced Oyate
Ta Olowani, Songs of the People, a 52-part public radio
series on Native American music from over 50 triibes. He also
maintains "Real REZ," a website and weekly video blog
concerned with realties of reservation life.
8/03/07
Actress and producer Georgina Lightning (Cree) has recently
been given recognitions by the Independent Feature Project (IFP)
and Filmmaker Magazine. She was selected to participate
in the 2007 IFP Rough Cut Lab in New York City, a national program
that connects mentors with first-time feature filmmakers before
the directors submit their works to film festivals. At the September
IFP Market in New York, she was nominated for the Adrienne Shelley
Director's Grant. See picture below.
Lightning has also been named by Filmmaker Magazine in
its annual survey as one of "25 New Faces in Film" in
2007. She is in post-production on her directorial debut, Older
than America, a story of the impact of the boarding school experience
on generations in a Native community, starring Georgina as Lucy,
Adam Beach as Jim and Bradley
Cooper as Luke.
10/05/07
Director Larry Blackhorse Lowe
(Navajo) received one of two Panavision Awards from the 2007 New
Visions/New Mexico Contract Awards, which will provide him with
$10,000 in camera equipmental rentals, along with a narrative
award of $20,000 towards the short film Masa'n'i, set in
the 1940s, about teenager in who must choose whether or not to
leave the Navajo reservation. The 2007 New Visions awards provided
11 contracts worth $160,00 to winning New Mexico-based producers
and directors. Lowe has also been awarded a 2007 Media Arts Fellowship
from Renew Media for the development of his film production, The
Left-Handed Path. Renew Media, founded as National Video Resources
20 years ago, annually provides substantial grants to 20 fellows
toward the production of new work.
11/25/07
Director Billy Luther
(Navajo/Hopi/Laguna Pueblo) has become the first Native American
filmmaker to be awarded support from Creative Capital, a premiere
national organization founded in 1999 to support individual US
artists in film/video and the visual arts. Luther's winning documentary
project, Grab (working title), focuses on Grab Day, an
annual celebration traditional to Laguna Pueblo, and follows family
members as they participate. Luther has previously been the recipient
of the Roy W. Dean Fellowship and a selected participant in the
Tribeca Film Institute's All Access program. His feature documentary,
Miss Navajo, premiered
at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival and was aired on PBS' Independent
Lens series.
Creative Capital's winning projects receive initial awards of
$10,000. As the projects develop, the organization may offer as
much as $50,000 each through the tenure of the multi-year grant.
The winners also participate in a distinctive Artist Services
Program that provides skill-building assistance in areas such
as fundraising, networking, marketing, and strategic planning,
with the goal of advancing both their projects and their careers.
In 2008 forty-one media and visual artists' projects were selected
from 2,535 applications.
1/26/08
Filmmaker Andrew Okpeaha
MacLean (Inupiat) has been named by Filmmaker Magazine
in its annual survey as one of "25 New Faces in Film"
in 2008. MacLean's short work Sikumi/On
the Ice is the first film to be written entirely in the
Inupiaq language. The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film
Festival where it won a Special Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking.
8/12/08
Lisa Meeches (Ojibwe) has received a 2007 National Aboriginal
Achievement Award for her work as one of the most dynamic and
respected television producers in Canada.
8/03/07
Chef Loretta Barrett Oden (Citizen Band Potawatomi) has
won a Boston/New England Chapter Emmy for the PBS series, Seasoned
with Spirit: A Native Cook's Journey. Oden wrote and hosts
the series, which is a co-production of Connecticut Public Television
and Native American Public Telecommunications.
8/08/07
Filmmaker J. Carlos Peinado
(Mandan/Hidatsa) has been named the first Chair of New Media Arts
at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Prior to joining IAIA,
he directed the documentary Waterbuster,
an inquiry to his family's story and the impact on the Mandan
of the building of the Garrison Dam on the Missouri River. He
previously served as the creative director of Native Peoples
magazine.
11/17/07
Heather Rae (Cherokee)
has been awarded a 2007 Media Arts Fellowship from Renew Media
for the development of a film production, Family: The First
Circle, an examination of the American foster care system.
Renew Media, founded as National Video Resources 20 years ago,
annually provides substantial production grants to 20 fellows
toward the production of new work.
11/17/07
Actor August Schellenberg (Mohawk) has been
nominated for an Emmy for "Outstanding Supporting Actor in
a Miniseries or Movie" for his portrayal of Sitting Bull
in HBO's Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. The film was nominated
for an Emmy in the "Outstanding Made for TV" category
and received 15 other nominations in various categories.
8/08/07
For his role as Plutarco in El Violin (director: Francisco
Vargas), a film concerned with the resistance of a peasant community
to a Mexican army unit rooting out "subversives, " Don
Angel Tavira has received the Best Actor Award in the "Un
Certain Regard" section of the 2006 Cannes Film Festival.
Tavira is one of many generations of musicians in his family noted
for performing music in a traditional style known as Calentaño
(i.e., from the Tierra Caliente region of Mexico) and comes from
Corralfalso, part of the town Ajuchitlan del Progreso in the state
of Guerrero, which is the traditional land of Nahua people.
11/17/07
Media artists and writers Kade Twist (Cherokee) and Nathan
Young have received a 2008 Tribeca All Access Creative Promise
Honorable Mention for Screenwriting for their screenplay, Heavy
Metal Indians (working title), in which a rebellious Native
American teenager struggles with misfits, methamphetamines, and
an unexpected act of violence that changes him forever. Twist
was a participant in the recent Reel Native workshop utilizing
cell phones for digital media production organized in Phoenix
by the WGBH mini-series We Shall Remain. He is one of the
artists in the 2008 group show "Remix: New Modernities in
a Post-Indian World," a joint exhibition of The Heard Museum
and the National Museum of the American Indian. Four Creative
Promise Awards and three Honorable Mentions were selected by a
distinguished jury from the 31 film projects chosen to participate
in the 2008 Tribeca All Access program.
8/12/08
Media artists and writers Nathan
Young (Pawnee/Delaware/Kiowa) and Kade Twist have received
a 2008 Tribeca All Access Creative Promise Honorable Mention for
Screenwriting for their screenplay, Heavy Metal Indians
(working title), in which a rebellious Native American teenager
struggles with misfits, methamphetamines, and an unexpected act
of violence that changes him forever. Four Creative Promise Awards
and three Honorable Mentions were selected by a distinguished
jury from the 31 projects chosen to participate in the 2008 Tribeca
All Access program. Young is the co-director of the Professional
Development Center at the Fort Gibson Public Schools in Oklahoma,
where he leads students in the creation of indigneous language
animations. In 2005 he was awarded Renew Media's [now the Tribeca
Film Institute's) Media Arts Fellowship.
8/12/08
** indicates that a short description of the
film can be found in the PDFs of titles screened at the 1995,
1997 and 2000 Native American Film and Video Festivals. To open
the PDF sorted by title, enter
here.
Image credit:
Carlos Efraín Pérez being interviewed by Marcelino
Pinto, 2000 Native American Film and Video Festival - Photograph
by Amalia Cordova, NMAI
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