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Individuals: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-R-S-T-W-Y
Organizations
Individuals
A
Vincent Blackhawk
Aamodt (Blackfoot/Lakota/Mexican) is one of three directors
chosen from among thousands of applicants for the 2004 ABC and
Directors' Guild of America Directing Fellowship program. His
feature-length documentary The
Ghost Riders had its World Premiere at the 2003
Native American Film and Video Festival.
For more information go to www.abctalentdevelopment.com/.
2/9/04
For Sherman Alexie's The
Business of Fancy Dancing, the 2002 OUTFEST gave its
Outstanding Actor Award to lead actor Evan
Adams and Outstanding Screenwriting Award to Sherman
Alexie.
Opening commercially in October 2003 in: Berkeley, CA; Albuquerque,
NM; Santa Fe, NM; New York, NY; Los Angeles, CA; Olympia, WA;
and Houston, TX. For schedule and more information go to www.fallsapart.com/fancydancing/
8/31/02
B
Pierre Barrera (Lakota) has been selected for the 2004
ABC Talent Development Scholarship/Leadership Award. He will
be paired with a senior ABC-Disney executive during the grant's
10-month program and given full access to the corporation's
extensive production resources while he works on film projects.
Barrera, one of only ten award recipients, attended the IAIA's
2004 Summer Film and Television Workshop, sponsored by ABC-Disney,
the Kellogg Foundation and the National Museum of the American
Indian. . In June 2005 Barrera was featured on Native America
Calling speaking about the impact of the ABC/Talent program.
10/30/05
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
The 2005 Leo Awards, recognizing excellence in the film and
television industry in British Columbia, gave its award for
the Best Information Series to The Creative Native, a
series about Aboriginal artists and craftspeople on APTN, produced
by Tamara Bell, Karen Lam, and Karen Wong, and hosted
by Tamara Bell.
4/2/06
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
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (director: Yves
Simoneau) won the Emmy for Outstanding Film Made for Television
at the 2007 Primetime Emmy Awards. Produced by HBO, the film
stars August Schellenberg as Sitting Bull, Adam
Beach as Charles Eastman M.D., Aidan Quinn as Senator Henry
Dawes, Anna Paquin as Elaine Goodale Eastman, Eric Schweig as
Gall and Wes Studi as the
prophet Wovoka, with an outstanding supporting cast, in a story
that spans the period in which the Lakota were compelled to
settle on reservations. For their performances both August Schellenberg
and Aidan Quinn were nominated for Emmy awards.
11/17/07
C
Maria Campbell (Métis), author, playwright, filmmaker
and professor was recently awarded one of two 2004 Molson Prizes
of the Canada Council for the Arts. A former National Aboriginal
Achievement Award winner and inductee in the Saskatchewan Theatre
Hall of Fame, Campbell was the founder and director of her own
production company where she wrote and directed documentaries
and produced the first weekly Aboriginal television series entitled
My Partners, My People. Two Molson Prizes worth $50,000
each are awarded every year to distinguished Canadians, one
in the arts and the other in the social sciences or humanities.
7/12/04
Tonantzin Carmelo (Tongva/Kumeyaay) was nominated for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in Dreamworks' Into the West in 2005 at the 12th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
7/26/11
Keisha Castle-Hughes (Ngati Porou, Tainui, Ngapuhi)
has been invited to join the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts
and Sciences, an honor reserved for artists and executives who
have distinguished themselves in the field of theatrical motion
pictures. She is one of 127 people who were invited in 2004
to join the organization. Castle-Hughes stars in The Whale
Rider (2002, Director: Niki Caro), playing Paikea (Pai)
Apirana, a young girl in a small Maori coastal community in
New Zealand who is destined to follow in the footsteps of her
ancestor Paikea, the first whale rider. Castle-Hughes was nominated
for Best Actress in a Leading Role for the 2004 Academy Awards,
the youngest lead ever to be nominated. She was a 2004 Screen
Actors Guild (SAG) Awards nominee for Outstanding Performance
by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role and won the 2003 Critics
Choice Award of the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA)
for Best Young Actor. In 2004 The Whale Rider won Best
Foreign Film at IFP's Independent Spirit Awards. In 2003 the
film won the World Cinema Audience Award at Sundance Film Festival
and the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film
Festival.
7/12/04
Wayne Cody (White Mountain Apache) has been named as
the new host for the national call-in show Native America
Calling, produced by Koahnic Broadcast Corporation and aired
by AIROS. Cody has experience in both TV and radio news, and
hosted a call-in show on KNNB at Whiteriver, AZ, when he served
as the station manager of the tribal station.
11/24/04
Rhoby Cook, executive director of Northern California
Cultural Communications (NC3), has been awarded funding from
the Paul Robeson Fund for Independent Media for Smokey's
Grandmother Says. California Indians and Wildland Fire,
the pilot for a 4-part documentary radio series on western forest
preservation, focused on the viewpoints and knowledge of California
Indians.
10/25/01
Dustinn Craig (White
Mountain Apache/Navajo) has been awarded a 2005 National Video
Resources Media Arts Fellowship to produce Ride Through Genocide
(working title), a documentary chronicling a grouup of American
Indian skateboarders on the White Mountatin Apache Reservation.
The fellowship, founded by the Rockefeller Foundation, is awarded
annually to about 20 media artists.
6/13/05
D
Daniel Davis of the Film and Video Center has won a
MUSE Gold Award for his video on NMAI's Cultural Resources
Center in Suitland, Maryland. When not producing exhibits media
or supervising audio-visual services for NMAI's Heye Center,
Dan is an active singer and guitarist with his band The Blue
Umbrella.
10/25/01
E
Mariano Estrada (Tzeltal) has received a 2002 Rockefeller
Media Fellowship to produce Hacia el horizonte/Towards
the Horizon, a documentary exploring the vital role played
by indigenous women in Chiapas and the need for the social equality
for women and men. Estrada is an indigenous farmer, merchant
and visual anthropologist who has produced several documentaries
since introduced to videomaking in 1992, with works shown international
festivals. He currently is coordinator of communications for
the Committee for the Defense of Indigenous Freedom in Chiapas,
Mexico.
For more information go to www.rockmediafellows.org
8/19/02
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
Chris Eyre (Cheyenne
and Arapaho) is one of 3 artists selected for a 2007 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. Eyre came to national prominence
with his first feature, Smoke Signals, and many award-winning
films since. In 2006 for his HBO feature film Edge
of America, Eyre received the Peabody Award, considered
one of the most prestigious awards in electronic media. The
film also received the 2005 Directors Guild of America's Award
for Outstanding Directorial Achievement, and the 2006 Parents'
Choice Award,
7/07/07
F
Sean Lee Fahrlander (Ojibwe) is a winner in ABC Television's
New Talent Development Program for minorities, receiving a $20,000
grant and provided with a mentor to work on developing his film
project Walk the Bear.
11/12/02
Gary Farmer (Cayuga)
has won the 2001 Taos Mountain Award, given annually
by Taos Talking Pictures festival to an outstanding Native American
film professional. Gary is an accomplished stage and screen
actor (Dead Man,
Smoke Signals,
Powwow Highway)
in Hollywood and independent film; a director and producer of
documentaries and a television series; and a cultural activist
who has started an outstanding magazine, an arts festival, and
is now actively developing Canada's Aboriginal Voices Radio
Network. In December he appeared with director Jim Jarmusch
at NMAI's At the Movies screening of the independent
classic feature Dead Man.
For more information go to www.ttpix.com
Related content on this site: 2001
At the Movies
12/10/01
G
Juan José García
O. (Northern Sierra Zapotec) has been elected as the
new president of the Consejo Latinoamericano de Cine y Comunicación
de los Pueblos Indígenas (CLACPI), the indigenous media
makers organization of Latin America. In 2006 under his leadership
the 8th Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos
Indígenas, produced by CLACPI, will be organized in Mexico
by a consortium of indigenous media makers and organizations
there. Mr. Garcia has served in Oaxaca City, Mexico, as president
of Ojo de Agua Comunicacion and director of the Centro de Video
Indigena, and has also worked in his own community and others
in southern Oaxaca on developing Native community radio. He
is a 2003 recipient of a Rockefeller Media Fellowship. Related
content on this site: Video Mexico
Indigena/Video Native Mexico.
1/31/05
Juan José García
O. (Northern Sierra Zapotec) has been awarded a 2003
Rockefeller Foundation Media Fellowship for production of La
morada del rayo/The Abode of Lightning concerned with legends
in the Chinanteca region of northern Oaxaca State in Mexico.
He has recently been the president of Ojo de Agua Comunicación
in Oaxaca City, Mexico and is currently on a one-year appointment
to "La Voz de la Chinantla," a Native community radio
project in southern Oaxaca Mr. Garcia previously was director
of the Centro de Video Indigena in Oaxaca City and worked with
Comunalidad, a Zapotec organization working in local video,
radio and music. He was one of the videomakers presenting works
in NMAI's April 2003 national video tour Video
México Indígena/Video Native Mexico.
5/25/03
Leslie Gee (Caddo/Delaware/Choctaw) 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. Gee, who received her BFA in Creative Writing from
the Institute of American Indian Arts, attended IAIA's 2005
Summer Film and Television Workshop, sponsored by ABC/Disney,
the Kellogg Foundation, and the National Museum of the American
Indian. She also was the winner of the Native American Writer
Award in the 2005 Taos Summer Writer's Conference.
10/30/05
Danis Goulet (Métis) has been named the new Executive
Director of the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in
Toronto. A filmmaker whose work has been screened at numerous
festivals, including Sundance Film Festival, she has previously
worked in the film and television industries in Saskatchewan
and Ontario.
8/12/04
Actor Graham Greene (Oneida) is the recipient of the
2004 Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's prestigious
Earle Grey Award, presented as part of the 19th annual Gemini
Awards, for his outstanding body of work in Canadian television
over the past 20 years. As one of Canada's most prolific actors,
his significant body of work includes such popular programs
as North of 60, The Red Green Show and the multi-Gemini
Award nominated mini-series, Shattered City: The Halifax
Explosion. Mr. Greene has received five Gemini nominations
and won two for his performance on the youth program, The
Adventures of Dudley The Dragon. His long list of television
credits also includes Spirit Bay, Lonesome Dove: The
Series, The New Beachcombers, Northern Exposure,
Outer Limits, Shadow Lake, and Exhibit A: Secrets
of Forensic Science.
10/24/05
H
A John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship has
been awarded to Alexandra Halkin, founder and international
coordinator of the Chiapas Media Project/Promedios de Communicación
Comunitaria, for video production. The foundation's fellowships
recognize outstanding individuals who are advanced professionals
in their fields (natural sciences, social sciences, humanities,
creative arts).
4/11/04
Robert Halmi, Sr., chairman of Hallmark Entertainment,
which produced the 2003 TV mini-series and film festival favorite
Dreamkeeper, received
the 2004 Lifetime Achievement Award at MIPTV international television
market held at Cannes. The veteran TV producer has over 200
made-for-television movies, series and miniseries to his credit.
4/11/04
Radio producers Nellie Moore (Inupiat) and D'Anne
Hamilton (Inupiat) have received together the prestigious
2001 Wassaja Award presented by the Native American Journalists
Association (NAJA) to "a Native American journalist who has
exhibited extraordinary service to Native journalism." The team
produces Independent Native News, aired daily on hundreds
of radio stations.
For more information go to www.naja.com/achieveawards.html
and www.nativevoice.org/news/news1.htm
10/25/01
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
In April 2006 Sterlin Harjo
(Creek/Seminole) won the Tribeca All Access Program's top Creative
Promise Award for his new screenplay Before the Beast Returns,
about a lifelong loser's quixotic journey towards self-awareness.
Harjo was selected as a 2006 National Video Resources Media
Arts Fellow for the production of his first feature film, Four
Sheets to the Wind, a story of a young Seminole man as he
sets off on an off-beat journey of mourning for his father.
"This Time, the Indians Tell Their Own Story," an
article by John Anderson about the making of this film in Tulsa
and Holdenville, Oklahoma, appeared in the New York Times
on Sunday, August 27, 2006. In 2005 Harjo was selected as one
of the first five Annenberg Film Fellows at the Sundance Institute
which is providing substantial technical support for the production
of this film.
8/29/06
Sterlin Harjo (Creek/Seminole) is one of five filmmaker
selected for the newly established Annenberg Film Fellows Program
at the Sundance Institute. Harjo, who is an alum of the Sundance
Feature Film Program, will receive extensive support over a
two-year period. His film project, Four Sheets to the Wind,
is a mythical story that follows a young Native man and his
family as they come to terms with tragedy in a small town in
Oklahoma. In 2005 Harjo's short fiction Goodnight, Irene
has screened at numerous film festivals.
10/30/05
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
Two Worlds Colliding (director: Tasha Hubbard)
is the recipient of the Canada Award in the 2005 Gemini Awards.
The Canada Award honors excellence in television programming
that reflects the racial and cultural diversity of Canada. The
film investigated the "freezing deaths" in Saskatoon's
Aboriginal community and the roles of police.
4/2/06
Artist Dina Huntinghorse (Wichita), best known for her
outstanding jewelry design, has been selected by ABC Talent
Development to receive a $20,000 grant and to be matched with
mentors for the development of her screenplay, My Turquoise
Horse.
2/15/06
J
Wapos Bay: There Is No
"I" in Hockey is the winner of the Canada
Award in the 2005 Gemini Awards, presented by Canada's Academy
of Cinema and Television. The Canada Award is sponsored by the
Department of Canadian Heritage's Multiculturalism Program.
Directors winning the award are Dennis
Jackson, Melanie
Jackson, Anand Ramayya, and Michael Scott.
8/03/07
Selina Jayne (Creek) was a co-recipient of Best Contemporary
Makeup/Feature Film for her work on David Lynch's Mulholland
Drive. The award was from the Hollywood Make-up Artists
and Hairstylists Guild.
For more information go to www.okit.com/arts/2002/junejuly/makeupartist.html
8/19/02
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
In March 2003 Sergio
Julian C. (Mixtec), Webmaster and video editor at Ojo
de Agua Comunicación in Oaxaca, Mexico, was in residence
at NMAI's Film and Video Center as a Community Professional
as part of a program of NMAI's Community Services department.
6/3/03
K
Performer Tina Keeper (Cree) is among the 14 recipients
of the prestigious National Aboriginal Achievement Award. Keeper,
a Gemini Award winning actor, is well-known for her portrayal
of Michelle Kenidi, an Aboriginal constable in the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police, on CBC's television series North of 60.
7/21/04
Actor Tina Keeper, star of CBC's North of 60,
was invested into the Order of Manitoba in May 2002, the province's
highest honor.
8/31/02
Leah Kihara has won
Pacific Islanders in Communications 2002 Short Film Initiative
for I
Scream, Floats, and Sundays, an experimental film that
explores the complex relationships between Hawaiian women and
their surrounding worlds. Her recent documentary Hokule'a-Guiding
Star was screened at the Smithsonian Institution in June
2002. She currently serves as a special projects manager at
'Olelo Community Television in Hawai'i.
For more information go to www.piccom.org
8/19/02
Darrell Robes Kipp (Blackfeet) has been selected by
the Montana Committee for the Humanities for the 2005 Governor's
Humanities Award for his work in language preservation and founding
of the Piegan Institute in Browning. Kipp is co-director of
Transitions: Destruction of the Mother Tongue, one of
the first Native-produced documentaries focused on tribal language
8/24/05
Allison Knox and Gail Small have been appointed
to the Board of Directors of Native American Public Telecommunications,
to serve through Fall 2003. Ms. Knox is manager of public relations
for Alaska Native Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (CIRI). Ms. Small
is the founder and executive director of Native Action, one
of the first Native not-for-profit organizations on a reservation,
which is dedicated to Native environmental protection, educational
equality and political reform. She is a former Kellogg Fellow
and has received numerous awards and recognitions.
1/16/03
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
In November 2002 Zacharias
Kunuk (Inuit) was chosen Best Director at the
27th American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco and his
film Atanarjuat/The
Fast Runner won Best Film. In July 2002 Kunuk
was awarded Canada's National Arts Award at the Banff
Centre for the Arts, which includes a cash prize and an artist's
residency at Banff. The film won five 2002 Genie Awards,
including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Screenplay.
11/19/02
Zacharias Kunuk's
(Inuit) film Atanarjuat/The
Fast Runner has been selected as Canada's official entry
into the 2002 Academy Awards for Best Film in a Foreign
Language and has been nominated for Best Picture in Canada's
Genie Awards. It is scheduled for the 2002 Sundance Film
Festival. Since receiving the 2001 Camera D'Or Award
for Best First Film at the Cannes Film Festival, the film won
the Best Canadian Feature at the Toronto Film Festival.
It has been screened at various festivals, including theTelluride
Film Festival in Colorado and ImageNATIVE Media Festival in
Toronto.
Set in the eastern Canadian Arctic, the story focuses on a small
Inuit community in which two brothers become the subject of
another man's jealousy and rage. Zach's work has been shown
in 16 countries, from Peru to Taiwan. His credits include the
ground-breaking Qaggiq (Gathering
Place, 1989), Nunaqpa (Going
Inland, 1991), and Saputi
(Fish Traps, 1993). He is president of Igloolik Isuma
Productions, which he co-founded in 1990 following seven years
as senior producer and station manager for the Inuit Broadcasting
Corporation.
Press: National
Film Board of Canada
Related content on this site: Zacharias
Kunuk Interview
12/10/01
L
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
Cynthia Lickers-Sage (Mohawk), founder and and programming
director of the imagineNATIVE Aboriginal Film and Media Arts
Festival, has been appointed Acting Aboriginal Arts Officer
at the Ontario Arts Council. Lickers-Sage is also the founder
and former executive director of the Centre for Aboriginal Media,
a support organization for First Nations film and video makers.
From 1994 - 2003 she served as the Aboriginal Outreach Coordinator
at V Tape, Canada's largest independent video distribution organization.
As a media artist, her work has been featured in shows in Canada
and abroad, and she has curated numerous media arts exhibitions.
7/20/04
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
Gabriel Lopez-Shaw, a 2002 winner of the National Video
Resources Media Arts Fellowship, is currently in post-production
on Indigenous Movement, an interactive website that explores
how the "Indigenous Movement" addresses critical global
issues, such as global warming and exhausted natural resources.
10/30/05
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 Larry Blackhorse Lowe
has been recognized by Filmmaker Magazine as one of 2005's
twenty-five top new faces in independent film.
10/10/05
M
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
Laala Matias (Cherokee/Arawak/Black/Carib) has been
awarded the ABC/Disney Talent Development Writing Fellowship.
The $50,000 award is a Los Angeles-based residency program pairing
talented young writers with experienced professionals from the
ABC/Disney studios. Matias graduated from New York University
and 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
Malinda M. Maynor (Lumbee) has received a 2001 Rockefeller
Foundation Film/Video/Multimedia Fellowship for her multimedia
project "Labors of Love: Lumbee Indians' Art and Work. Malinda
is currently an M.A. candidate in history at the University
of North Carolina. She is associate producer of In the Light
of Reverence (Director: Christopher McLeod) about Native
American sacred lands, featured in 2001 on P.O.V.
For more information go to www.rockmediafellows.org
10/25/01
In December 2006 Harlan McKosato (Sac and Fox) returned
as Host and Producer to the national radio call-in program Native
America Calling. McKosato is a columnist for the Santa Fe New
Mexican and in 2006 served as adjunct professor of journalism
at the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2005 he was recognized
by his alma mater, the University of Oklahoma, as a Distinguished
Alumnus of the Gaylord College of Journalism.
8/03/07
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
Radio producers Nellie Moore (Inupiat) and D'Anne
Hamilton (Inupiat) have received together the prestigious
2001 Wassaja Award presented by the Native American Journalists
Association (NAJA) to "a Native American journalist who has
exhibited extraordinary service to Native journalism." The team
produces Independent Native News, aired daily on hundreds
of radio stations.
For more information go to www.naja.com/achieveawards.html
and www.nativevoice.org/news/news1.htm
10/25/01
Marrie Mumford (Métis/Chippewa-Cree) has been
selected as the Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Arts and
Literatures at Trent University, investigation performance traditions
from indigenous nations and renewing appreciation of Aboriginal
performing arts. Under her guidance a new Aboriginal Performance
Space has been created at Trent and will focus on using performance
practice as a form of analysis. Mumford was previously director
of the Aboriginal Arts Program at Banff Centre for the Arts.
The Canada Research Chair Program is a national program intended
to make Canada one of the world's top five countries for research
and development. Mumford's has been selected as an "exceptional
emerging researcher" and her chair appointment is initially
for five years and renewable.
10/30/05
N
Darlene Naponse (Ojibwe), writer, film director and
teacher, was honored for her achievements at the 2005 Awards
Ceremony of Laurentian University's Presidential Advisory Committee
on the Status of Women.
10/10/05
Amelia Niumeitolu has won the Pacific Islanders in
Communications 2002 Short Film Initiative for her project
Bodega Dreams: A Tongan-American Story, a semi-autobiographical
narrative film about a young Tongan-American woman who travels
to New York City to become a filmmaker, actor and artist.
For more information go to www.piccom.org/new_initiatives.html
8/19/02
O
Alanis Obomsawin
(Abenaki) has recently won two awards recognizing her outstanding
contributions to documentary film. For over thirty years, Obomsawin
has documented the lives of aboriginal people in eastern Canada
and community efforts to overcome historic injustices. She received
the 2004 International Documentary Association (IDA) Pioneer
Award at the IDA Distinguished Documentary Achievement Awards
Gala, sponsored by Eastman Kodak and the Sundance Channel. At
the 2004 imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival Obomsawin
received the Milestone Award for Lifetime Achievement, along
with retrospective screenings of her first film, Christmas
at Moose Factor, and Richard Cardinal: Cry from the Diary
of a Métis Child.
12/10/04
In April 2003 Canadian director Alanis
Obomsawin (Abenaki) was awarded the Highest Distinction
Award in the Advancement of Women by the Women's Y Foundation
of Montreal. The noted filmmaker also served on the Steering
Committee for the Minister's Forum on Diversity and Culture
held at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, April 22-23, intended
to bring together members of culturally-diverse communities
with cultural decision-makers in Canada to affect cultural policy.
5/25/03
Director Alanis Obomsawin
(Abenaki) has won the 2001 Governor General's Visual and
Media Arts Award for distinguished career achievement. This
is Canada's foremost distinction for excellence in the arts.
In June 2001 Alanis also was honored with the award of the Dr.
Bernard Chagnan Assiniwi Prize in recognition of the
body of her work, her contribution to Aboriginal culture and
her work in encouraging the development of other filmmakers.
This is the first year of the prize, to be given annually to
Native artists at Montreal's Presence authoctone/First People's
Festival. In November Alanis was honored in the 25th Margaret
Mead Film Festival in New York.
For more information go to www.canadacouncil.ca/prizes/ggvma/
12/10/01
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
Sandra Sunrising Osawa (Makah) has been awarded a 2002
Rockefeller Media Fellowship for a new production on prima
ballerina Maria Tallchief (Osage). Osawa's work has been screened
and won awards nationally and internationally. She has accomplished
frequent "firsts," including producer/writer for first nationally-televised
series entirely by Native Americans and first Native director
to be nationally-broadcast on PBS. She has shown work at the
Sundance Film Festival, Vienna Film Festival, Native
American Film and Video Festival, Amiens Film Festival and
many others.
For more information go to www.rockmediafellows.org
8/19/02
P
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
Migizi Pensoneau (Ojibwe) has been selected to receive
the 2004 ABC Talent Development Scholarship/Leadership Award.
He will be paired with a senior ABC-Disney executive during
the grant's 10-month program and given full access to the corporation's
extensive production resources while he completes an in-progress
screenplay. Pensoneau, one of only ten award recipients selected,
attended the 2004 Summer Film and Television Workshop of the
Institute of American Indian Arts. Pensoneau is currently doing
script work for ABC-TV's Boston Legal.
10/30/05
Carlos Efraín Peréz
Rojas (Mixe), of the Chiapas Media Project-Promedios
(CMP), has received a 2005 Reebok Human Rights Award for his
work for CMP as a producer and a coordinator in Guerrero, Mexico.
CMP is a US-Mexican partnership that assists indigenous and
campesino communities in southern Mexico to create media by
providing video equipment, computers, and training. Peréz's
documentaries have won major awards, and in 2002 he was a recipient
of the National Video Resources Media Fellowship. The Reebok
Award recognizes young activists, aged 30 and under, who have
made significant contributions to human rights causes through
nonviolent means, and includes a substantial grant which is
being used to further CMP's human rights work. For an interview
by Native Networks with Peréz click
here.
5/31/05
Carlos Efraín Pérez Rojas (Mixe) has been
awarded a 2002 Rockefeller Media Fellowship for his video
production La lucha por los bosques/The Fight for the Forests
that explores the repercussions of deforestation on the lives
of indigenous communities. Pérez has been involved with
video since 1990, first as a member of the Mixe video collective
Video Tamix in Oaxaca, Mexico and most recently as the coordinator
of training and production for the Chiapas Media Project. His
work has been screened internationally in festivals, including
Sundance Film Festival, Native
American Film and Video Festival, Amiens Film Festival,
and Festival de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indigenas de las
Americas.
For more information go to www.rockmediafellows.org
and www.chiapasmediaproject.org
8/19/02
Actress Annabella Piugattuk (Inuit) was nominated for
a 2004 Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting
Role for her role in The Snow Walker as Kanaaalaq, an
Inuit woman who rescues the pilot of a downed plane in the Arctic.
The film (2003, director: Charles Martin Smith) which opens
in theaters in March 2004, received nine nominations for Genie
Awards.
5/4/04
R
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
In June 2002 director Randy
Redroad's (Cherokee)
The Doe Boy won the
Teueikan Grand Prize for Creation in Montreal's First
People's Festival. Redroad won Best Director award in
the 2001 American Indian Film Festival and his film won the
Best Film award, along with awards for many of its cast. The
Doe Boy has been screened and won awards at numerous
international festivals including its world premiere at the
2001 Sundance Film Festival.
For more information go to www.nativelynx.qc.ca/English/2002prix.htm
Press: Indian
Country Today
7/30/02
Broadcaster Suzanne Rochon Burnett (Métis) has
received the National Aboriginal Achievement Award, the Canadian
Aboriginal community's highest honor. She is the first Aboriginal
woman in Canada to be granted two commercial radio licenses
by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.
7/21/04
On March 16, 2006 the James Smithson Bicentennial Medal was
presented to the Bolivian filmmaker Jorge Ruiz at the
National Museum of Natural History by Cristián Samper,
director of NMNH. Ruiz is being recognized for his distinguished
career as a pioneer in visual anthropology and for documenting
the complex cultural realities of indigenous people of Bolivia.
He has directed over 100 films during his career.
For more information, go to www.mnh.si.edu/ruiz.
3/29/06
S
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
Vanessa Shortbull (Oglala Lakota), finalist in the 2001
Four Directions Talent Search, won the title of Miss
South Dakota in June 2002, and will compete in the Miss
America finals in September 2002.
8/19/02
Allison Knox and Gail Small have been appointed
to the Board of Directors of Native American Public Telecommunications,
to serve through Fall 2003. Ms. Knox is manager of public relations
for Alaska Native Cook Inlet Region, Inc. (CIRI). Ms. Small
is the founder and executive director of Native Action, one
of the first Native not-for-profit organizations on a reservation,
which is dedicated to Native environmental protection, educational
equality and political reform. She is a former Kellogg Fellow
and has received numerous awards and recognitions.
1/16/03
Michael Smith, founding director of the American Indian
Film Festival (AIFF) and the American Indian Film Institute
in San Francisco was awarded TV station KQED's Local Hero
Award, presented at the 26th annual AIFF in November 2001.
For more information go to www.aifisi.com
12/10/01
Shirley K. Sneve (Sicangu Lakota) has been named by
Native American Public Telecommunications as its Executive Director.
Sneve previously served as NAPT's Assistant Director for Programming
and Production. Prior to joining NAPT she was director of Arts
Extension Service in Amherst, MA and served as consultant of
numerous arts organizations. She began her career as a minority
affairs producer for South Dakota Public Broadcasting in Vermillion,
SD.
8/03/07
Ksenia Solo has won the best Performance in Youth Programming
from the 2005 Gemini Awards for her role as Zoey Jones in "Can
You See Me Now," an episode of renegadepress.com,
a TV series about an e-zine reporting on the lives of today's
youth, now in its second season on APTN. Renegadepress.com
received seven nominations for Gemini Awards.
4/2/06
Nominated for a 2006 Genie Award for Best Performance by an
Actor in a Supporting Role is Bernard Starlight, who
plays Huey Bigstone in the film Hank Williams First Nation
(director: Aaron James Sorenson). The Genie Awards provide recognition
for outstanding achievement in the Canadian television industry.
8/03/07
T
Patty Talahongva (Hopi), independent radio and TV producer
and host for Native America Calling, has been hired as producer
for both Native America Calling (NAC) and National
Native News (NNN), both produced by Koahnic Broadcast Corporation
and aired by AIROS. NAC has just celebrated nine years on-air
and NNN is seventeen years old-two of the longest running Native
programs on public radio.
11/12/04
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
Divino Tserewahu
(Xavante) has been awarded the 2002 Anaconda Festival Grand
Prize for his documentary Waia
Rini, the Power of the Dream.
11/13/02
Directors Divino Tserewahú
(Xavante), Caimi Waiassé (Xavante) Bartolomeu
Patira (Xavante), Jorge Protodi (Xavante) and Winti
Suya (Suya) have been awarded the first Anaconda Award Grand
Prize for have been awarded the first Anaconda Award
Grand Prize for Mnhono Wapte. Their documentary portrays
a key event for the Xavante-the complete cycle of initiation
of one group of boys over a two-year period. This work had its
U.S. premiere at the 2000 Native American Film and Video Festival,
in cooperation with NYC's Donnell Media Center. Produced by
Video nas Aldeias, Brazil.
12/10/01
Deron Twohatchet (Kiowa) has been selected to receive
the 2004 ABC Talent Development Scholarship/Leadership Award.
He will be paired with a senior ABC-Disney executive during
the grant's 10-month program and given full access to the corporation's
extensive production resources while he works on film projects.
Twohatchet, one of only ten award recipients, attended the IAIA's
2004 Summer Film and Television Workshop in Santa Fe.
11/12/04
W
Sundance Institute has selected Taika Waititi (Maori)
as one of six Annenberg Film Fellows in 2005. Waititi is of
Te Whanau-A-Apanui descent from the east coast of New Zealand.
He will develop his first feature project Something Beginning
with Love, an unconventional comedy, at the June Sundance
Directors/Screenwriters lab. Waititi has been recognized internationally
for his short film Two
Cars, One Night which was nominated for an Oscar. His
latest short, Tama Tu, screened at the 2005 Sundance
Film Festival where it received an Honorable Mention, the Berlin
International Film Festival where it received a Special Jury
Prize, and the Aspen Shortsfest, where it received a special
award for its originality. The Fellows program is unique at
Sundance in that it gives direct financial support to facilitate
the making of the Fellows' projects as well as a support for
a full range of needs of the selected filmmakers.
6/7/05
Y
Thomas Yeahpau (Kiowa) has been selected for the 2005
ABC/Disney Talent Development Writing Fellowship. The award
of $50,000 supports participation in a Los Angeles-based residency
program pairing talented young writers with experienced professionals
from the ABC/Disney studios. A student at Haskell University,
Yeahpau is the founding director of the Stories-N-Motion film
festival. 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
Nathan Young IV (Cherokee) recently received the National
Video Resources Media Arts Fellowship Award, a $35,000 grant,
to produce an animated film that tells the Pawnee story about
the creation of the universe and the gift of ceremony. Young
has been working on animated tales in the American Indian Resource
Center in Tallequah, Oklahoma.
6/13/05
Organizations
In April 2003 the Taos Mountain Award, given annually
by Taos Talking Picture Festival to recognize the lifetime achievements
of an outstanding Native film professional, was awarded to the
Native media organization Ojo
de Agua Comunicación, in Oaxaca, Mexico. The
organization was founded by producers from Indian communities
throughout Oaxaca to produce for Native communities, develop
local television initiatives, and support training and post
production for Native media makers. Receiving the award were
two of the founders, Juan
Jose Garcia O. (Zapotec), president of Ojo de Agua,
and Guillermo Monteforte. Elizabeth Weatherford of the
NMAI Film and Video Center made the award presentation. The
Taos Mountain Award has been given to Victor Masayesva, Jr (1995),
Sandra Sunrising Osawa (1996), Alanis
Obomsawin (1997), Loretta Todd (1998), Phil Lucas (1999),
Merata Mita (2000), Gary Farmer
(2001), and CEFREC and CAIB national Native media organizations
in Bolivia (2002).
For more information go to www.ttpix.com
5/30/03
** 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 |
