The burden of representation

ative American and indigenous filmmakers face expectations about what kind of movies they should make but they are changing those notions.

That was the gist of a panel discussion titled "The Burden of Representation," which took place during the recent Sundance Film Festival.

Moderator Heather Rae, Cherokee, was joined by four Native filmmakers, including Billy Luther, Navajo/Hopi/Laguna; Sterlin Harjo, Seminole/ Creek; Taika Waititi, Te Whanau a Apanui; and Auraeus Solito, Palaw'an.

N. Bird Runningwater, associate director of the Sundance Institute's Native American and Indigenous Initiative, introduced the panel and went on to say that film doesn't always have to be defined in a conventional way.

Independent film is unique, which is why the Sundance Film Festival has been so popular since it started in 1981.

Sundance founder Robert Redford is committed to encouraging Native American filmmakers, and he and Rae started the Native Forum to do just that.

But as Runningwater said, "We don't always have to take ourselves so seriously."

The burden

Runningwater, Mescalero Apache/Cheyenne, said Native representation can seem more like a burden when influences and expression should be the imprint an artist leaves on creativity.

Harjo's film, "Four Sheets to the Wind," is a movie about his culture and tribe, but his characters do not talk about how "Indian" they are.

The movie is about events that could happen to anyone: a death in the family where we experience the grief and nuances of the characters.

Waititi's film also has no cultural representation reflected in the story other than the fact that both the actors and the director are Maori people from New Zealand.

Solito is Palaw'an, an indigenous group in the Philippines, and is openly gay. He wrote and directed "Tuli," which is set in a traditional village.

Solito explained that where he comes from it is easier to be a gay filmmaker than an indigenous one. His problem was finding funding for a tribal movie because they don't make money, he said.

While his film is about life in an aboriginal village, it is concerned with a girl who falls in love with her childhood friend, another girl.

In Harjo's film the voice-over is spoken in Seminole, but the voice-over is not the whole movie, it is only part of what makes the movie meaningful.

The subject matter deals with death, and Harjo explained that he has noticed in his own life that people are more honest with each other at such times.

People do things they normally wouldn't do when faced with death and the fact they are not going to be here forever.

Different directions

When asked if the panel members wanted to make future movies from their home or tribal lands, there were many different answers.

Harjo's next film is based in Oklahoma. He says living in Oklahoma inspired him to write and he writes what he knows.

His next feature is about a 35-year-old white man ostracized from his hometown because he claims to have seen Bigfoot.

Waititi also wants to work at home in New Zealand. He is proud of New Zealand cinema and says there are a lot of great filmmakers coming out of New Zealand, but "it really worries me (people are) coming (to the United States) to get agents."

Luther sees himself doing more stories that come from the Navajo Reservation, explaining there are many stories to be told from the rez.

The burden of representation also arises when the filmmaker is of mixed race, the panelists agreed.

Waititi explained that in Maori culture there are issues of being mixed race, something most of the panelists have experience with (Luther is of three tribes and Harjo two).

Waititi, who is half white, said, "We are cursed yet blessed, it opens up a lot of the world to us."

Labels are also a problem within the film industry, and all the filmmakers said it bothered them to be automatically labeled as "Native American/indigenous filmmakers."

Harjo explained, "As a child, I didn't say I wanted to be a 'Native American' filmmaker."

Alternative sexual orientation is not a race, but creates its own minority.

Solito said it is only in Western culture that he is labeled as a gay indigenous filmmaker, explaining that there is a fine line between celebrating ourselves and being labeled in a way that limits how an artist is perceived.

The attraction of films

Asked what it was in filmmaking that attracted them, each panelist had a different response.

Solito explained that the chants and stories his elders would tell were imagined and with film, all those imagined images are real.

As a storyteller in film, he is doing what his ancestors have been doing all along, he said.

Harjo, who started out as a painter, said that with film the results were immediate, while a painting took weeks to complete.

Waititi finds that being a filmmaker makes you very vulnerable.

"People are looking at your and your thoughts in your brain, judging you," he said. "(It is an) art of acceptance of yourself."

When Luther watched the musical "Popeye" as a child, it inspired him to make films. Many other documentaries, including "The Eyes of Tammy Faye," also paved a line of inspiration for him.

The panelists also differed on advances in film technology.

For Solito, digital technology is better for your budget, and the next step is putting movies on the Internet.

Waititi blurted out, "I hate the Internet."

The crowd laughed but he modified his answer, saying that short films are good to watch on the Internet. However, he doesn't trust it because with the Internet available, people stop reading books and looking up words in a dictionary.

Waititi worries that people are losing their ability to memorize things and watching movies on a computer is not as fulfilling as watching movies in a theater, where the darkness, the big screen and the presence of the audience create a shared experience.

If the panel had a take-away message, it seemed to be that the burden of representation on Native American and indigenous filmmakers is the responsibility all filmmakers face, and that is to represent themselves and their perceptions of the world they live in.

Indigenous films are representative of who we are and where we come from, whether the content is culturally based or not.