{"id":17,"date":"2010-11-23T17:53:50","date_gmt":"2010-11-23T17:53:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/testing123.org\/?p=17"},"modified":"2020-12-29T06:28:52","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T06:28:52","slug":"where-are-all-the-aboriginal-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/where-are-all-the-aboriginal-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Where are all the Aboriginal movies?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In his award-winning documentary&nbsp;<em>Reel Injun<\/em>, Neil Diamond takes a humorous and insightful look at Hollywood\u2019s portrayal of North American Aboriginal people. The B&amp;W film clips of non-native actors with brown make-up playing Indians in fictional stories created by writers and directors who have probably never known Aboriginal people are reminders that all is not right in movie-land. Even with the recent Hollywood trend towards films with multi-dimensional, sympathetic Aboriginal characters (<em>Dances With Wolves, Flags of our Fathers<\/em>) it is still evident that American filmmakers believe they are doing Aboriginal people a favour by giving us bigger talking roles. The mythical Indian is still alive and well in Hollywood (see the \u201cTwilight\u201d films for proof).<\/p>\n<p>By the end of the 20th century it was evident that if someone was going to change the way the mainstream film industry portrayed Aboriginal people on screen, it would take a real Indian to do it. The breakthrough came with&nbsp;<em>Smoke Signals<\/em>written by Spokane\/Coeur d\u2019Alene writer Sherman Alexie and directed by Cheyanne\/Arapaho Chris Eyre. Since that time, there have been only a handful of theatrical releases written or directed by Aboriginals \u2014&nbsp;<em>Whalerider<\/em>&nbsp;(based on a book by Maori writer Witi Ihimaera),&nbsp;<em>Boy<\/em>&nbsp;(written and directed by Maori Taika Waititi and New Zealand\u2019s biggest grossing film in history) and&nbsp;<em>Atanarjuat&nbsp;<\/em>(written and directed by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk).&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>Atanarjuat<\/em>&nbsp;was the highest grossing non-French film in Canada in 2002 and won the Camera d\u2019Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s time for broadcasters and distributors to get behind more Aboriginal written and directed feature films in Canada. It\u2019s clear from films like&nbsp;<em>Whale Rider<\/em>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<em>Atanarjuat<\/em>&nbsp;that there is an enthusiastic international audience for indigenous stories. We clearly need some champions within the industry to get our films financed, made and into the mainstream film market.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In his award-winning documentary&nbsp;Reel Injun, Neil Diamond takes a humorous and insightful look at Hollywood\u2019s portrayal of North American Aboriginal people. The B&amp;W film clips of non-native actors with brown make-up playing Indians in fictional stories created by writers and directors who have probably never known Aboriginal people are reminders that all is not right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.1491tvseries.com\/barbarahager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}