Expect the Russell House Theater to come alive Monday with a day-long showing of a variety of Native American films as part of the 18th Annual Native American Indian Film and Video Festival of the Southeast’s 2015 calendar of events.
Dr. Will Moreau Goins, who founded the festival in conjunction with the Columbia Film Society (now the Nickelodeon), has partnered with the USC Office of Multicultural Student Affairs in order to bring the festival’s unique collection of Native American Indian films to the USC student body.
The list of chosen films for the event is diverse, ranging from films centering on the restoration of the Lakota Native American language to environmental films to the action martial arts feature “The Dead Lands.” All the films include Native American creators and / or content and were either sought out by Goins or carefully chosen from a group of submissions through a screening process.
“We only select films that have Native American input on both the creative end as well as on the talent end,” Goins said. “And [also] things that have indigenous themes.”
Scheduled yearly in November to celebrate National Native American Indian Heritage Month, the 2015 event will showcase the work of a growing body of Native American filmmakers, as well as celebrate the ancient Native American storytelling tradition that has been adapted more recently to the film-making and media arts fields.
“There has been a great rise in how many Native American Indian filmmakers are engaging in this ancient skill of storytelling that we’ve been doing for thousands of years," Goins said. "We would always tell stories by fireside or within our clans or within our longhouses. And so it’s an ancient form. But ... there’s been a large growth in how many indie filmmakers that we have in the 20 years that I’ve been doing the festival. At one time there were only a few, and, of course, the rise happened right after Kevin Costner created the film ‘Dances with Wolves.’ There was a large rise in us taking back our storytelling tradition and telling our own story.”
Taking place in a location convenient and accessible to USC students, the festival is a painless way for students to learn more about Native American culture and methods of storytelling. The films shown will be accurate depictions of Native American Indian heritage — films that feature historical plotlines that are neither romanticized by Hollywood nor marketed in mainstream movie theaters.
"These are not films that are going to be seen at cinema houses in dominant culture, and so this is a great opportunity for learning, for being exposed, for hearing our stories told our own way,” Goin said. “These are not Hollywood cinema depictions, so it’s a corrected depiction of who we really are. It’s not about Tonto or broken English.”
The 18th Annual Native American Indian Film and Video Festival of the Southeast will visit campus as a drop-in event in the Russell House Theater Nov. 23. Films will be shown from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and from 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Entrance will be granted to students upon the showing of a valid USC ID.