- This event has passed.
Powerlands: In-person Watch Party and Panel Discussion
April 23, 2023 @ 5:00 pm - 7:00 pm
$25In celebration of Earth Day and Earth Week, join us for an in-person watch party of the film Powerlands. A limited number of tickets will be available for this screening on April 23 at 5:00 p.m., followed by a discussion at 6:15pm via zoom with filmmaker Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso. The watch party will feature light snacks and refreshments at the Mitchell Museum.
Powerlands
A young Navajo filmmaker investigates displacement of Indigenous people and devastation of the environment caused by the same chemical companies that have exploited the land where she was born. On this personal and political journey she learns from Indigenous activists across three continents. Website: https://powerlands.org/
Filmmaker:
Ivey-Camille Manybeads Tso – Director Ivey Camille Manybeads Tso is an award-winning queer Navajo filmmaker. She was a fellow with the Firelight Media Documentary Filmmaker Lab, and the 4th World Indigenous Media Lab. She started making films at the age of 9, through the Native youth media project Outta Your Backpack Media. At the age of 13 she made the award-winning fiction film In the Footsteps of Yellow Woman, based in the true story of her great-great-great grandmother Yellow Woman, who lived through the Navajo Long Walk of 1864-1868. The film screened in over 90 film festivals internationally and won 11 awards. Ivey Camille continued to refine her filmmaking craft with a full scholarship to Idyllwild Arts Academy in California. She later returned home to work on films in her community of Navajo Nation. At the age of 19, Ivey Camille began work on Powerlands, her first feature. Powerlands has screened internationally and won several festival awards including the The 2022 Rigoberta Menchú Grand Prize.
Directors Statement
My grandmother taught me how to stand on the frontlines. She taught me about the ways that my ancestors have resisted displacement since colonial settlers came here. When thinking about how to tell the stories in this film, I think first about the storytelling traditions I have learned from elders in my community. That is why this story is told through the stories, voices, and languages of Indigenous women.
I started making films at the age of nine, through the Native youth media project Outta Your Backpack Media. At the age of 13, I directed In the Footsteps of Yellow Woman, based in the true story of my great-great-great grandmother Yellow Woman, who lived through the Navajo Long Walk of 1864- 1868. At the age of 19, I started Powerlands, which took six years to film and edit.
For too long, others have been telling our stories. As an Indigenous filmmaker, I have seen the ways in which our stories are co-opted and stolen. This film is an intervention, a chance for our stories to be told by us, in our own languages.
All proceeds will support our Indigenous Medicine and Traditional Food Gardens. For more information about this program, contact [email protected].