Screening Slated for Landmark Native American Film

The Native American Cultural Club and the Office of Multicultural Affairs are sponsoring a screening of the 1998 film Smoke Signals on Wednesday, November 14. The presentation will start at 7:00 p.m. in Textor 103. A $1 admission donation is suggested.

"No Italians with long hair," says Sherman Alexie, who wrote the film’s screenplay, in commenting on the fact that in Smoke Signals it is Native American actors who are playing the parts of Indians. Smoke Signals was one of the first movies to be written, directed, produced, and acted by Native Americans.

Opening on a Coeur d’Alene reservation in Idaho, Smoke Signals tells the story of two young men, Victor and Thomas, who are about to take a bus ride to Phoenix to collect the ashes of Victor’s long-departed father, played in flashback sequences by award-winning actor Gary Farmer (see story on page 3). Victor’s father had deserted him and his mother a decade earlier, and Victor is having trouble coming to terms with that, especially in light of the fact that his alcoholic and abusive father once saved Thomas’s life from the fire that killed Thomas’s parents. In the course of their travels, the stern and angry Victor is able to show the goofy, gregarious Thomas how to live up to his heritage while Thomas forces Victor to confront the ghosts of his past, no matter how terrible they may seem.

A Rolling Stone reviewer wrote that the film "doesn’t pretend to solve the mystery between parents and children or the clash between cultures that leaves Victor so angry and Thomas so eager to find stories that can heal wounds. Sherman Alexie has crafted one of the best films of the year."

Smoke Signals won several honors, including the Best Artistic Contribution Award at the 1998 Tokyo International Film Festival and the Filmmakers Trophy at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival.

For more information, contact assistant professor of anthropology Brooke Olson at 274-1735 or bolson@ithaca.edu.

photo © 1998 Miramax Films
Adam Beach (left) and Evan Adams in Smoke Signals