The Native American Film and Video Festival is a noncompetitive showcase of film, video and audio productions held biennially in New York City. Each festival screens between 50 and 80 documentaries, short features and animations, introduced by their producers and members of the native communities represented. Works to be featured in a given festival are chosen by a team of selectors made up of media makers and cultural activists from among indigenous peoples of the Americas and the program staff of the Film and Video Center of the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian. Selectors have included indigenous film makers such as Chris Eyre, Randy Redroad, and Nora Naranjo-Morse, and Native American cultural experts and academics such as G. Peter Jemison, Beverly Singer, and Paul Apodaca.
Founded in 1979, the Festival is internationally-recognized as the first to feature Native productions from throughout the Americas and the Arctic Circle; indigenous media makers participate from Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, El Salvador, Mexico, and the United States (including Hawaii).
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“It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans. America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“And so we ask for peace for the gods of our fathers, for the gods of our native land. It is reasonable that whatever each of us worships is really to be considered one and the same. We gaze up at the same stars, the sky covers us all, the same universe compasses us. What does it matter what practical systems we adopt in our search for the truth. Not by one avenue only can we arrive at so tremendous a secret.”
—Quintus Aurelius Symmachus (A.D. c. 340–402)
“The obvious parallels between Star Wars and The Wizard of Oz have frequently been noted: in both there is the orphan hero who is raised on a farm by an aunt and uncle and yearns to escape to adventure. Obi-wan Kenobi resembles the Wizard; the loyal, plucky little robot R2D2 is Toto; C3PO is the Tin Man; and Chewbacca is the Cowardly Lion. Darth Vader replaces the Wicked Witch: this is a patriarchy rather than a matriarchy.”
—Andrew Gordon, U.S. educator, critic. “The Inescapable Family in American Science Fiction and Fantasy Films,” Journal of Popular Film and Television (Summer 1992)
“If you want to tell the untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you’ve got to find a language. Which goes for film as well as prose, for documentary as well as autobiography. Use the wrong language, and you’re dumb and blind.”
—Salman Rushdie (b. 1948)
“I recently learned something quite interesting about video games. Many young people have developed incredible hand, eye, and brain coordination in playing these games. The air force believes these kids will be our outstanding pilots should they fly our jets.”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“Marry, I cannot show it in rhyme, I have tried; I can find no rhyme to “lady” but “baby”Man innocent rhyme; for “scorn,” “horn”Ma hard rhyme; for “school,” “fool”Ma babbling rhyme; very ominous endings. No, I was not born under a rhyming planet, nor I cannot woo in festival terms.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)