In honor of Native American Heritage Month, MSP Film Society presents three documentaries by award-winning writer-director Anne Makepeace on Sunday November 4th, including a spotlight on pioneering portrait photographer Edward Curtis, in collaboration with Cardozo Fine Art.
Director, writer, producer Anne Makepeace attending!
The film screenings are in conjunction with the celebrations to mark the 150th birthday of Edward Curtis. See upcoming and ongoing Curtis events here.
All tickets are $5 in advance, or donation (pay what you wish) at the door.
Tribal Justice is a documentary feature about a little known, underreported but effective criminal justice reform movement in America: the efforts of tribal courts to create alternative systems of justice. There are more than 300 tribal courts across the country. In California, two formidable women lead the way. Abby Abinanti, Chief Judge of the Yurok Tribe on the north coast, and Claudette White, Chief Judge of the Quechan Tribe in the southern desert, are creating innovative systems that focus on restoring rather than punishing offenders in order to keep tribal members out of prison, prevent children from being taken from their communities, and stop the school-to-prison pipeline that plagues their young people.
Abby is a fierce, lean, white-haired elder who has dedicated her life to humane justice. Claudette represents a new generation of Native American lawyers who are revisioning justice. The film introduces Abby and Claudette, then then follows several cases both in and out of their courts. Taos Proctor is facing a third strike conviction when we meet him in Abby’s court in 2013. While on parole from San Quentin, he was arrested with methamphetamine, a third felony. We follow Taos, a boisterous bear of a man, over two years as Abby and her staff help him complete court programs and rebuild his life.
A thousand miles south, Claudette invokes the Indian Child Welfare Act to reunite a nine-year-old boy with his family. Meanwhile her teenage nephew, Isaac, faces two felony charges for breaking into cars. Because his case is in state court rather than tribal court, he becomes a classic case of the school-to-prison pipeline.
Tribal Justice challenges the entrenched cultural narrative of Native Americans as hopeless dependents unable to better their own circumstances. Our stories show our featured judges asserting tribal sovereignty and invoking their own traditions to heal their people and raise them out of poverty and inequality.
Director Biography
Anne Makepeace has been a writer, producer, and director of award-winning independent films for more three decades. Her new film, Tribal Justice, premiered at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in February 2017 and screened at many festivals across the country, winning Best Documentary prizes at the American Indian Film Festival and the Charlotte Film Festival, the Rigoberta-Menchú Grand Prix at the Montréal First People’s Film Festival, the Directing Award at Cinetopia. Tribal Justice received support from the MacArthur Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Vision Maker Media, CPB, California Humanities, and private foundations. The film was broadcast on the acclaimed PBS documentary series, POV, in August 2017, and is distributed to the educational market by Bullfrog Films.
Her recent documentary, We Still Live Here: Âs Nutayuneân, about the return of the Wampanoag language, had its broadcast premiere on the PBS series Independent Lens in November 2011. The film has won many awards, including the Full Frame Inspiration Award and the Moving Mountains Award at Telluride MountainFilm for the film most likely to effect important social change. The $3000 MountainFilm prize went directly to the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project, enabling them to launch their first-ever language immersion camp for children. We Still Live Here was funded by ITVS, the Sundance Documentary Fund, the LEF Foundation, and the National Science Foundation, among others. Makepeace was able to complete the film with fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Other recent films by Anne Makepeace include: I. M. PEI: Building China Modern (PBS broadcast on American Masters in 2010) and her Emmy nominated feature documentary Rain in a Dry Land (lead show on PBS P.O.V. 2007), which chronicles the journey and resettlement of two Somali Bantu refugee families from Africa through their first two years in America. Makepeace won a National Prime Time Emmy for her American Masters/PBS documentary Robert Capa in Love and War, which premiered at Sundance in 2003. Coming to Light, her documentary about Edward S. Curtis, also premiered at Sundance, was short-listed for an Academy Award in 2000, broadcast on American Masters in 2001, and won many prizes, including the O’Connor Award for Best Film from the American Historical Association, an Award of Excellence from the American Anthropological Association, a Gold Hugo from Chicago, Best Documentary at Telluride, and many others. Her first documentary, Baby It’s You, premiered at Sundance, was broadcast as the lead show on P.O.V. in 1998, and screened at the Whitney Biennial 2000. For additional information, please explore www.MakepeaceProductions.com.
Support Provided By
Specializing in the work of Edward Curtis for four decades
SPECIAL SCREENINGS
Limited engagements of independent films from around the globe, including advance releases, Twin Cities premieres, and cinematic classics.
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