Tuesday, November 13, 2018
Evening SCREENING | 6:00 – 10:00 PM
The Heritage center & State museum | Bismarck, North Dakota
$12 in advance | $15 at the door | $2 seniors and students
What is the Value of Human Life?
Year: 2018 | 4 min
Genre: Short Documentary
Language(s): English
Directed by: Jake Bergen
Country of Origin: Canada
Director's Statement
A Man Falls from the Sky
(Valt een man uit de lucht)
Year: 2017 | 9 min
Genre: Short Narrative
Language(s): Dutch
Directed by: Kurt Platvoet
Country of Origin: Netherlands
Mni Wiconi: Water is Life
Year: 2018 | 3 min
Genre: Animation / Experimental Film
Language(s): Silent
Directed by: Miguel Antonio Genz / Jeremias Galante
Country of Origin: United States
Director's Statement
I am a Latino educator/artist and citizen with concerns for our public health, safety and democratic rights. Our freedom to speak and peacefully resist to protect our constitutional rights to clean water, air, and land is being threatened as never before. For the past several years, I’ve been particularly concerned with the negative impacts unconventional drilling (fracking) has had and continues to have on our environment, our health, our economy, and our democracy. We have a government that doesn’t stand with the people it’s charged with protecting. We have legislators who are creating laws to keep innocent people from protesting the theft of land and resources by an out of control greedy industry. We also have people in power who deny the effects of climate change.
My film Mni Wiconi: Water is Life was inspired by the events of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) in North Dakota and the brave individuals who stood up to this adversarial industry, who persevered under some of the greatest trials in human history, and who brought these issues to the attention of the entire world. It is an animated film designed to raise awareness of issues raised by this resistance movement and is a fictional narrative that uses symbolic metaphors to represent economic greed, political and corporate bullying, and the destruction of the environment.
The pre-production process for the film did not begin with a conventional storyboard or sequence of panels like most narratives in film usually do. Instead it started as much more abstract with iconic imagery from the oil and gas industry based on my own interpretations of the things I’ve observed and learned from Marcellus and Utica shale unconventional drilling and related activities going on near my home in Pennsylvania. I wanted convey a rough edge effect and style with grit.
Artistically, I was inspired by the work of William Kentrigde, Kathy Kollwitz, and the art from Oswiecim Malarstwo, a book of art created by Nazi war prisoners in Auschwitz. I studied Native American symbols, illustrations and consulted with elders of the Sioux territory to acquire cultural authenticity. The music was challenging to find that would be appropriate, but not ceremonial. Robbie Robertson’s piece was selected as it seemed to match the intent and hope for the healing of the land.
– Miguel Antonio Genz
Too Many Bodies
Year: 2018 | 6 min
Genre: Animation / Experimental Films
Language(s): English
Directed by: Reena Dutt
Country of Origin: United States
Director's Statement
Social media was not a powerful tool at that time, and now Parkland students are making strides online with their own journey to reform through digital media. Mobilizing thousands across the country to support common sense gun laws, they mirror the youth I dreamt of being — the activists of 1968 Berkeley and New York City.
Around the same time I started thinking about a John Legend video for “Penthouse Floor” I had produced a few months prior that addressed our country’s polarizing political divide. The video garnered numerous remarks online and I further realized our need for entertainment – it’s an approachable means of expressing opinions of conflict. Perhaps members of those online audiences may not feel comfortable speaking their opinions in public, and instead, they activate by becoming living room advocates.
In the process of seeking support for the production, I learned the TOO MANY BODIES team had two degrees of separation from a fatality of the Santa Fe High School shooting, and I personally had one degree of separation from a Columbine survivor. I only learned of my colleague when she revealed her PTSD was ongoing due to the event nearly 20 years prior, and it wasn’t something she revealed to too many people.
What happens to the families who have lost loved ones? What happens to the community members who were witnesses? What happens to the survivor with life-changing PTSD? What happens to the onlooker who doesn’t know how to help?
Film and movement were always my go-to therapy, and TOO MANY BODIES brings the two together as a means to express something that is as important to my soul as is being an American. The music video is partnered with a website for survivors, advocates, and loved ones. We hope to point audiences in an introspective direction that will in turn ask them to rethink and/or activate as advocates for common sense gun laws.
The power of art as a seed for discussion is necessary. I hope you and fellow artists join me in having those hard conversations using art as an instigator, in turn strengthening the progress of our community and our country.
The Beautiful Struggle
Year: 2018 | 8 min
Genre: Short Documentary
Language(s): English
Directed by: Christian Gray
Country of Origin: United States
Director Christian Gray, Producer Brad Kroupa, and students from White Shield High School will be in attendance
Real People. Real Stories. Real Struggles. White Shield, North Dakota Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
Dodging Bullets
Stories from survivors of historical trauma
Year: 2018 | 1 hour 38 min
Genre: Documentary Feature
Language(s): English
Directed by: Sarah Edstrom / Kathy Broere / Jonathan Thunder / Bob Trench / Tom Trench
Country of Origin: United States
Directors Kathy Broere and Bob Trench will be in attendance
Native Americans have dodged bullets since first contact with Europeans. This film brings a cross-generational sampling of Indigenous people, researchers, and politicians to reveal stunning reasons for their disproportionately high incidences of health and social issues. This collection of remarkable stories, names Historical Trauma as the unique and insidious part of the genetic code that resilient Native American populations are still finding ways to dodge.
The film focuses on Native Americans and is not the typical “tragedy porn” film about Indian Country, it is more of an accurate portrayal of life.
Filmmakers Kathy Broere and Bob Trench will be on hand for a filmmaker Q&A following the film.
Director's Statement
Naawakamig (Dennis Banks), co-founder of the American Indian Movement
When I was in my teens, I drove alone to Wounded Knee in order to see life in Indian Country. At the memorial, I got out of my car to experience a part of history that I knew little about. I had grown up in the 60’s and my understanding of Native American history was primarily based on two men; Christopher Columbus, who was portrayed as a great man who deserved his own holiday and Jim Thorpe, a sports hero and one of the only Native American biographies found in my grade school library. Little did I know that my lack of knowledge could have gotten me killed. While at the Wounded Knee memorial, I was chased at gun point by three men for just looking around. I have often thought to myself that I dodged a bullet that day.
Three years ago while researching diabetes in the United States, I ran across a man named Raymond White Tail Feather at the Dakota Trading Post in Poplar, Montana. We talked for over an hour and during that time, I told him about my experience at Wounded Knee. He told me that I was naive not to understand why this happened and that I needed to learn the truth for myself. Not the “truth” taught in history books, but the truth about: first contact, relocation, the Dawes Act, and the boarding school era. He said only until I learned about these events, would I be able to understand why I was chased at gun point.
It is well known that Native Americans have endured horrible traumas in their collective history that they are still working to overcome. This film hopes to build an understanding that the struggles the indigenous people of North America face today may be caused by the trauma that their ancestors faced many generations ago. It has only been recently discovered that traumatic events of past generations may cause epigenetic changes in the DNA and those DNA changes are passed down from generation to generation.
Just as Raymond White Tail Feather gifted me this journey, diabetes clinician Cheryl Bighorn-Savior’s gifted me the story about her brother in Poplar, Montana and it became the first step on my journey that led me around North America from Santee to Browning to Red Lake. My adventure will never end, because it teaches historical life lessons that a non-native must learn in order to understand what the First Nations people have to do to survive.
Dodging bullets is metaphorical, yet it is part of life in Indian Country. When you are marginalized and damaged, health and social issues come at you from all directions. The survivors are like a character in “The Matrix”; they work to protect their Spirit while flexing and bending out of the way of denigrating bullets in order to survive.
Facilitated Talking Circles:
Historical Trauma
Duration: 75 minutes
Join us in one of two facilitated talking circles to discuss the topics identified in the film, “Dodging Bullets”. All individuals are invited to share as part of the discussion.
The mission of the North Dakota Human Rights Film and Arts Festival is to educate, engage, and facilitate discussion around local and world-wide human rights topics through the work of filmmakers and artist. 2018 is the second year for both the film and art festivals.
In 2018, the film festival will take place in three cities in North Dakota: In Grand Forks, North Dakota on Thursday, November 8 at the historic Empire Arts Center; in Bismarck, North Dakota on Tuesday, November 13 at the North Dakota Heritage Center and State Museum; and for two nights in Fargo, North Dakota on Thursday, November 15 and Friday, November 16 at the historic Fargo Theatre in Fargo, North Dakota.
Tickets to the festival are $12 in advance and $15 at the door, and $2 for Seniors and Students.
The 2018 North Dakota Human Rights Film and Arts Festival is made possible through the generosity of the City of Fargo’s Human Relations Commission, the City of Fargo’s Native American Commission, The Arts Partnership and the Awesome Foundation: Cass Clay, and through partnerships with Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, the NDSU Memorial Gallery, the North Dakota Human Rights Coalition.
#NDHRFF18
Contact
Phone
1 (701) 205-0248
inquiry@human-family.org
Address
PO Box 9468
Fargo, ND 58106-9468
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