Documentary Educational Resources - Filmmaker / Masayesva Jr., Victor / All Films

Waaki (Sanctuary)

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 16:38:58 GMT

Renowned Hopi filmmaker Victor Masayesva, Jr. explores the centrality of corn for the Hopi, Nahua, and Maya, tracing the role of corn from creation stories to today's struggles against climate change. The film presents complex interrelationships between humans, plants, food systems, animals, birds, ceremonies and the cycles of the earth, sun and moon within the universe from a Hopi, Maya, and Nahua perspective. By tracing the lineage and mysterious origins of corn, we gain a deeper understanding of the ancestry of communities that transcend borders.

Masayesva writes, "The idea of sanctuary in our time is colored by the politics of human immigration. As contemporary media consumers, we are saturated with threats and security measures originating from alerts about immigration into our neighborhood. Today state borders have restricted and closed the numerous routes blazed by migrants and only wild birds and animals move freely without visas but nonetheless restricted to wildlife refuges.

Humankind has been in constant movement since the emergence, intent on leaving an oppressive order, seeking a better life, seeking sanctuary. For our age, sanctuary cannot be only within familiar beliefs and borders but beyond in the hope we carry in our soul. Sanctuary is the best we can be at the moment, and in the future."

"Waaki presents Hopi knowledge with a self-assured visual sovereignty."
– Dorothy Christian, Simon Fraser University

"The film is a fascinating blend of genres - part ethnographic, part documentary and part animation."
– Vicky Westover, Hanson FilmTV Institute Director, U of Arizona

Selected Screenings

Native Crossroads Film Festival, 2020

ImagiNative, 2019

Cornell University

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Itam Hakim Hopiit

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:45:00 GMT

Itam Hakim Hopiit
Buy Now: $320.00

Recently inducted into the National Film Registry, Itam Hakim Hopiit, which translates as "we / someone, the Hopi," is a poetic visualization of Hopi philosophy. Made at the time of the Hopi Tricentennial - marking 300 years since the 1680 Pueblo Revolt against Spanish colonial rule – the film presents a view of Hopi culture and history. Speaking in Hopi, a community elder shares personal recollections and cultural history, recounting stories of the Hopi emergence, perseverance, and the Bow Clan migration stories of his father. Through use of the film medium, Masayesva challenges viewers to understand the Hopi conception of time as cyclic, in which the world starts, ends, and starts again.

" ...The film offers a cultural bridge of a very different kind, evoking a culture and an environment through the look and sound of it and the fluidly majestic pace of its unfolding...to impart the drama of distant rainstorms across desert landscapes or cause one to gasp in astonishment at the rainbow that enters the frame during a revelatory pan, for indeed the lyricism of Masayesva Jr.'s imagery and the tone of reverence for the earth, whose caretakers the Hopi consider themselves to be, has the power to transport the viewer. It is the achievement of Masayesva Jr.'s work that even the most committed interpreters among us stand to be converted, if only for a moment, and taught the quiet virtues of observation.".

–Michael Renov, University of Southern California

"In this innovative work one of the last members of the Hopi historians' clan, Ross Macaya, recounts various epochs in Hopi history.... Macaya's tale concludes with a particularly Hopi type of history–the Hopi Prophesy."

– Elizabeth Weatherford, National Museum of the American Indian, in Art Journal

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Gold Hugo Award, Chicago International Film Festival, 1984

Museum of Modern Art, NYC

The Whitney Museum of American Art

The Long Beach Museum

National Museum of the Native American

Selected museums in Japan, the Netherlands, France, and the former Soviet Union

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Imagining Indians

Wed, 29 Aug 2018 12:44:00 GMT

Imagining Indians
Buy Now: $320.00

Reflecting on the making of Imagining Indians, Victor Masayesva Jr says, "Coming from a village which became embroiled in the filming of Darkwind, a Hollywood production on the Hopi Reservation, I felt a keen responsibility as a community member, not an individual, to address these impositions on our tribal lives."

"I have come to believe that the sacred aspects of our existence which encourages the continuity and vitality of Native peoples are being manipulated by an aesthetic in which money is the most important qualification. This contradicts the values intrinsic to what's sacred and may destroy our substance. I am concerned about a tribal and community future which is reflected in my film and I hope this challenges the viewer to overcome glamorized Hollywood views of the Native American, which obscures the difficult demands of walking the spiritual road of our ancestors."

Combining staged sequences with interviews with native people in Arizona, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, Washington and the Amazon, Imagining Indians is an alternately funny and biting critique of the intrusion of filmmaking into native communities. Filmed with an all-Indian crew, this remains one of Masayesva's most controversial works.

"What commands most attention in Imagining Indians is the examination of films as social projects, sowing disruption while perpetuating the myth that Indian cultures are easy for whites to understand."

– Elizabeth Weatherford, National Museum of the American Indian, in Art Journal

SELECTED SCREENINGS & AWARDS

Margaret Mead Film Festival, New York, 1993

Envisioning Native Americans, NYU, 1992

Onthullen om te Overleven Film Festival, Amsterdam, 1992

Society for Visual Anthropology Film Festival, 1994

Native American Film and Video Festival, NYC 1995

Taiwan International Ethnographic Film Festival, 2007

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