As the longest-running event promoting and celebrating Indigenous filmmaking, the American Indian Film Festival (AIFF) opens its 48th season stronger than ever.
Beginning on Nov. 3 and running for nine days, AIFF features 60 films from the U.S. and Canada in categories ranging from feature-length, narrative and animated shorts, documentaries, to music videos. About a dozen films are premier screenings. The festival poster, titled Captured, was created by Chelsea Smith (Anishinaabe).
New partnerships this year include an opening night event at the de Young Museum and an awards ceremony on Nov. 11 at the California Academy of Sciences. A free event at the Magic Theatre on Nov. 10 features a funders panel discussing opportunities for film projects.
The festival was established in 1975 by Michael Smith (Fort Peck Sioux) to present a comprehensive counterview to the racist portrayals of indigenous people that held sway in mainstream media and to provide Native filmmakers and actors with a platform to showcase their work.
When Smith died in 2018, the organization could have been easily derailed. However, the organizational structure he built, based on a familial and long-term community framework, was there to support his daughter when she took on the executive director’s role.
“Throughout my life I watched my parents work tirelessly, decade after decade to present the film festival for the Bay Area Native community each year,” said Mytia Zavala (Fort Peck Sioux/Laguna Pueblo/Navajo/Grand Ronde), who works solo for most of the year. “I create partnerships, curate film programs, and apply for funding. I utilize my media and producing background to get the festival in place. And then by late summer, that’s when I bring in a crew and we all work together to present a solid festival each year. I’m proud of the work that I’ve presented for five years, now going on six.”
Under Zavala’s tenure, the festival has flourished. She increased accessibility by building a partnership with the San Francisco Public Library in 2022 to offer free screenings. This year, the library will host five days of films. A new partnership with Berkeley City College will feature a Fireside Chat with two Native comedians, Jana Schmeiding (Cheyenne River Lakota) and Jackie Keliiaa Yerington (Paiute and Washoe).
The opening night screening at the de Young Museum is “Bones of Crows,” a feature historical drama from director and writer Marie Clements (Métis/Dene). It is the story of Aline Spears, a Cree matriarch who was stolen from her family and forcibly enrolled into Canada’s residential school system.
The film follows Spear from ages 9 to 86, showing the trauma, resistance, and resiliency of five generations of her family. The topic was not only an intimate one for Clements — whose mother, aunts, and uncles all experienced Canada’s residential schools — but also for every Native actor and crew member on the set who also had relatives in the system.
“I had always wanted to create a multi-generational narrative on the residential school experience in Canada,” said Clements. “To be able to look at it through the eyes of a matriarch but also through the point of view of her siblings, her children, and her children’s children. I believe this generational view is how Indigenous/Native American families have had to deal with their lived experience over the decades.”
In an earlier interview on H&H’s Video Interview Series, Clements said the film did a community screening tour to rural and remote Canadian towns where Indigenous communities welcomed the opportunity to share their own story. She said that despite the traumatic topic, bringing a hidden subject out in the open and addressing it from a Native perspective was a healing experience.
Filmmaker Jack Kohler (Hoopa) was in a rock band when he was introduced to Smith by his Yurok grandmother in 1990. She wanted him to use his music to tell the stories of their people.
“That was my introduction to the American Indian Film Festival, and it changed my life forever. Seeing so many Native films and Natives on screen really positively affected me,” said Kohler, who has submitted numerous films to the festival since then.
Kohler says there is a clear line between it and the current Native American film renaissance on large and small screens. “All those writers and actors that we see in programs like Reservation Dogs, Dark Winds, Prey, etc., all had some sort of a start on the big screen at one of the American Indian Film Festivals.”
His entry this year is “Gift of Fear,” which will be screened on Nov. 7. Kohler wrote the script with his daughter, Carly Kohler (Yurok, Karuk, Hupa), and co-directed with Katy Dore. It depicts the story of Milli, a young girl whose mother becomes one of the thousands of unsolved Missing and Murdered Indian Women (MMIW). As a teenager, Milli faces more trauma when her girlfriend is kidnapped. When the tribal police and other authorities reach no resolution for her mother’s murder, Milli is determined to move ahead on her own.
“The missing and murdered indigenous persons crisis has been happening in America since first contact. Pocahontas was one of the first documented MMIW cases that was romanticized and white-washed in so many ways,” said Kohler, whose connection to the issue took a horrific personal turn when his cousin, Emmilee Risling, went missing when filming began in 2021. She is still missing.
The AIFF has played an important role in providing a truer and fuller portrayal of Indigenous life, past and present, and in creating a supportive environment for generations of filmmakers. The 48th festival season shows that fire still burns strong.
“I have always felt supported by the American Indian Film Festival and Michael Smith, and I am forever grateful for that,” said Clements. “I think there is something so important in being able to see your reflection in the many films presented and the many filmmakers that are invited here to share our visions and our voices from different nations and communities across the Americas. It is invigorating and inspiring — I think this is both Michael’s and AIFF’s enduring legacy.”
The full schedule and tickets are available at aifisf.com/2023-film-schedule.