Visualities 2: More Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art

by Denise K. Cummings

Overview

Echoing and expanding the aims of the first volume, Visualities: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art, this second volume contains illuminating global Indigenous visualities concerning First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, Maori, and Sami peoples. This insightful collection of essays explores how identity is created and communicated through Indigenous film-, video-, and art-making; what role these practices play in contemporary cultural revitalization; and how indigenous creators revisit media pasts and resignify dominant discourses through their work. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Visualities Two draws on American Indian studies, film studies, art history, cultural studies, visual culture studies, women’s studies, and postcolonial studies. Among the artists and media makers examined are Tasha Hubbard, Rachel Perkins, and Ehren “Bear Witness” Thomas, as well as contemporary Inuit artists and Indigenous agents of cultural production working to reimagine digital and social platforms. Films analyzed include The Exiles, Winter in the Blood, The Spirit of Annie Mae, Radiance, One Night the Moon, Bran Nue Dae, Ngati, Shimásání, and Sami Blood. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781611863192
Publisher:	Michigan State University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2019
Series:	American Indian Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Denise K. Cummings is Associate Professor of Critical Media and Cultural Studies at Rollins College, where she teaches film history, theory, and criticism, critical media and cultural studies, and American and Indigenous literature, culture, and film.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xiii

Part 1 Indigenous Film Practices

Relocating The Exiles P. Jane Hafen 3

Winter in the Blood: A Conversation Joanna Hearne Lily Gladstone Alex Smith Andrew Smith 23

The Potential (and Pitfalls) of Activist Filmmaking: Indigenous Women's Activism in The Spirit of Annie Mae Channette Romero 55

Return Buffalo People: Against Genocide in Tasha Hubbard's Documentary and Animated Film Penelope Myrtle Kelsey 85

Visualities of Desire in Shimásáni and Sami Blood Denise K. Cummings 97

Indigenizing Genre: The Films of Rachel Perkins Jennifer L. Gauthier 127

A Green and Pleasant Land: Barclay's Ngati and an Indigenous Film Aesthetics Lee Schweninger 161

Part 2 Contemporary American Indian Art

Indigenizing Canadian Settler Monuments of Indians: Ehren "Bear Witness" Thomas's Video Make Your Escape Laura E. Smith 193

Inuit Agencies: The Legacy of Arctic Art Cooperatives and Indigenous Resistance Molly McGlennen 217

Epilogue. On the State of Media and Representation

The Fourth World's New Digital Native Media: In Brief Theodore C. Van Alst Jr. 243

Contributors 249

Index 255

Editorial Reviews

From decolonization to digital media, Visualities 2 is a broad conversation aware of how art has an impact on actual people in real communities. Indigenous people as readers of film and video by and about ourselves clearly influence these essays and make them richer, deeper, more real.”
—HEID E. ERDRICH, author of Curator of Ephemera at the New Museum for Archaic Media
 

From the Publisher