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"Forty Winters" and The 34th Annual American Indian Film Festival
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American Indian Film Festival
I worked down on Fisherman's Wharf for a tour company for over a year. It was always "Alcatraz-this" and "Alcatraz-that" all the time. I thought I had heard all there was to know about the notorious island/prison. However, I did not know that The Rock launched the modern American Indian activist movement.
A short film titled "Forty Winters" by San Francisco filmmaker Valarie Bluebird Jernigan tells the story of one man trying to recapture that spirit.
About Forty Winters
In 1969 American Indians occupied Alcatraz Island, beginning the American Indian activist movement. Forty years later, one of the original activists seeks to reignite the movement by putting the political symbol of the occupation, the tipi, back on the island. He looks to his children for support. Now adults, and engaged in their own struggle for survival, his children question the real benefits of the movement and its costs to their family. Forty Winters is a story about the idealism and the aftermath of the American Indian movement as told through one family’s struggle for cultural identity and survival.
The strength of Valarie's work convinced well-known filmmaker Chris Eyre to sign on as Executive Producer and she has already seen some positive steps forward regarding distribution.
“I’ve just finished submitting grants to Kellogg Foundation, CA Council of Humanities, and Native American Public Television and we’ve gotten broadcast letters of interest from KQED and NAPT.
And my shorter film, the relocation film which I retitled “A New Frontier”, was accepted to the 34th Annual American Indian Film Festival, said Jernigan.
About the American Indian Film Festival
The 34th annual American Indian Film Festival, presented over nine days, will run Nov. 6-11 at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema, One Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level; and conclude Nov. 12-14 at the Palace of Fine Arts, 3301 Lyon St. at Bay St. The festival will premiere over 80 new feature films, shorts, public service, music videos and documentaries from US American Indian and Canada First Nation communities.
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