Brandon Routh and Chris Mulkey also appear in this thriller about the darker side of the “Wild West.” Liz Irons’ documentary chronicles this memorable chapter both in plentiful archival materials and in the recollections of many surviving participants who reunite for an extensive 50th-anniversary commemoration.ĪIFF’s official closing selection on Thurs/10 (there are additional events the following two days) is writer-director Myles Clohessy’s The Redeemer, a period western starring Irene Bedard (the voice of Disney’s Pocahontas) in which two Native women struggle to survive after being kidnapped by roving outlaws. It galvanized international media and public attention to those issues as perhaps nothing had before (or has since), putting pressure on Federal policies and resulting in some real, positive change. The feature-length IndianLand looks at the signature event of the so-called Red Power movement of half a century ago: The 19-month (from November ’69 to June ’71) occupation of shuttered prison island Alcatraz by Native activists protesting the never-ending injustices against tribes by the US government, particularly in the realm of land seizures. Shaandiin Tome and Rayka Zehtabshi’s short documentary Long Line of Ladies offers a sweetly affirming view of a traditional coming-of-age ceremony for girls that is being revived after a long hiatus by the Karuk peoples of our state’s far north. gentrification in Oakland, written by born-and-raised Tommy Orange of the novel There There, a 2019 Pulitzer finalist.

Yvan Iturriaga’s Unlord the Land is a short dramatic narrative about community loyalty vs. 4-12 at various SF venues, opens Friday at Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio with a trio of works sharing a Northern California theme. (It actually started in Seattle before making a permanent move to SF in 1977.) Casting a wide net, with high-profile annual awards, its prize-winners over the decades have encompassed such influential titles as Powwow Highway, Dances With Wolves, Incident at Oglala, Smoke Signals, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, and Wind River.

The most historied among them is the American Indian Film Festival, the world’s oldest and largest of its type, now in its 47th year. This week brings a clutch of special filmic events, from a couple long-running festivals to spotlights on animation and cinema of the Caucasus.

Documentaries on alcatraz