Aug 02 2008
A rediscovered indie groundbreaker
Okay, kicking myself a bit here. Just a bit, since I was away on a (very nice, highly enjoyable) vacation for a couple of weeks, so there’s not a whole lot I could’ve done about catching this one in the Big Apple.
The lives of Native Americans — I’m talking about contemporary existences, not those of the Old West — are rarely seen or discussed on movie screens these days. As a culture, they’re still relatively marginalized. Sure, there have been films like Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals or documentaries such as Incident at Oglala by Michael Apted, but let’s face it, you can probably count all the Native American-centric films ever made on both hands, with fingers to spare.
However, a “lost” depiction of displaced, urban-dwelling Native Americans from the ’60s has recently been redistributed in a new 35mm print to arthouse cinemas courtesy of the good folks at Milestone Films. You may know Milestone as the company that re-released Charles Burnett’s amazing black-and-white drama Killer of Sheep last year.
According to critics, The Exiles, a 1961 feature by Kent MacKenzie, is equally unforgettable.
The Exiles chronicles a day in the life of some young Native Americans who left reservation life in the ’50s for the decaying, hard-scrabble district of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles, California. It’s a gritty, no-frills depiction of a truly underrepresented culture, and probably offers a point-of-view that very few of us have ever encountered.
I missed my main chance to see it in New York this month, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to make an upcoming Brooklyn screening. If you’d like to take a look at the film’s “touring schedule,” go here. Read some of the lavish praise that the rerelease has been receiving here, and if you want to watch the trailer you can do so here.
