Red River Film Festival on SOSU Campus
April 7, 2008
On Saturday May 3, the Red River Arts Council and Southeastern Oklahoma State University will host Native Witness: The Red River Film Festival. The film festival will showcase a diverse group of Native American filmmakers from across the native film community, with a special focus on filmmakers from Oklahoma. Festival participants will include established, emerging and student filmmakers. The films will explore a wide gamut of film making styles and techniques and will include feature length films and shorts along with animated features and experimental works that emerge from the depths of today’s native experience.
The festival is curated by Southeastern Oklahoma State University Professor Dave Barnes and internationally known Cheyenne artist Bently Spang. Spang who currently teaches filmmaking and video production at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston Massachusetts, has created a unique structure for the Red River Art Festival that steps outside usual festival structures. Rather than being limited to a single film entry as in most festivals, participants in the Red River Film Festival have the opportunity to screen multiple works. This format will give film festival attendees a chance to see a range of the film makers work and get a unique look at their development.
According to Spang, "our filmmakers are some of the best and the brightest in the Native film community. They have made their mark at festivals such as Sundance, The National Museum of the American Indian and the Santa Fe film Festival."
A special guest of the film festival will be Arapaho filmmaker Ava Hamilton. Hamilton is the president of the Native American Producers Alliance. She is also the director of Everything Has a Spirit, which premiered at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival and won the First Place Documentary Award at the 1994 American Indian Film Competition in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Alumni of Southwestern State University in Weatherford, Oklahoma, Hamilton will give share her insights about the filmmaker’s world and speak about the future of Native American film.
The Red River Film Festival screenings will be held Saturday afternoon and evening, in the theater (Room SU 213) of the new Student Union Building on the campus of Southeastern Oklahoma State University. The festival is supported by a grant from the Oklahoma Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
