This short essay film is based on Crow/Apsaalooke tribal cosmology in which wind characterizes one of the four cardinal points and when called upon represents for the tribe a powerful blessing in endurance and return. In this film dakaake (Apsaalooke for bird) signifies both wind and child. A non-narrative film, Four Keeps: Dakaake characterizes in an indefinite way the special place children hold in the tribe. The film equates the sacred characteristics of wind with those of children and alludes to the many years children were lost first to intertribal slavery and later to US government intervention into tribal life.
Helen Pease Wolf first transcribed the traditional Crow story accompanying this film, “The Story of Moon and His Bride”. Her great-granddaughter, Ramona Real Bird, reads and discusses the story in the film. The girl, or ‘bird’, in Four Keeps: Dakáake is Ramona’s granddaughter, Walks-to-School.
A film based on ‘The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky’. All of the text coming from a most sensitive artist genius who, being confronted with the horrors of war, betrayal, and inhumanity of society, - could no longer exist as the person he had been.
Based on ‘the Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky’
Choreography:...
Mary Riter Hamilton was as a Canadian artist. In 1919, she painted the battlefields of France and Belgium, recording the aftermath of World War One.
Inspired by Canadian folk singer James Keelaghan's 1988 song of the same name, the film chronicles one woman's sacrifice in the face of rampant prejudice tearing her Japanese-Canadian family apart.
