WCCC Blog

EarthVision Environmental Film Festival Youth Program

Monday, March 3rd
Mello Center with Eco Teach PVHS; Art Teach PVHS/Watsonville High; Guitar Teach PVHS/Watsonville High; Wetland Stewards PHVS; Watch PVHS

3:00 pm Screening: Youth Program
Ride of the Mergansers 11:00 (U.S.A. Minnesota Kid’s Power)

Going Big Box Vs Going Local 07:20 (U.S.A. Environmental Activism & Social Justice)

March Point – A Work in Progress 57:00 (U.S.A. Washington Environmental Activism & Social Justice)
Just A Lawn 13:11 (Canada Aspiring/Novice Filmmaker)

Student Introductions and Filmmaker Q & A

Please visit www.earthvisionfest.org for program details.

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Native Youth Program Blends Tradition and Technology (March Point)

Nick Clark, 18, was on the wrong path before he started making films with Native Lens. “My life was going down the drain,” he said in the trailer for his film “March Point.” “If I didn’t get involved with Native Lens I don’t know where I’d be at right now. Probably on the street somewhere or locked up.” Instead, Clark and two other La Conner High School students, Cody Cayou and Travis Tom, just completed “March Point,” an hour-long historical and environmental documentary with a $400,000 budget. Because of the program, Clark is keeping his grades up, preparing for a paid summer internship at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and getting his passport ready for travel to film festivals in Spain and France. He can hardly believe it. “I never thought it would get so big so fast. I just think it’s a good program for youth to tell their stories,” he said last week.

Cinematic stories by several students, including a trailer for “March Point,” will be screened during the Native Experience in Film Festival Saturday at the Swinomish Youth Center. The event includes a showing of the film “Expiration Date” and panel discussions with nationally known actors, directors and producers. Swinomish is an appropriate place for such an event. Native Lens, an innovative program that blends tradition and technology to give native youth a voice, started there four years ago as a partnership between Seattle-based Longhouse Media and the tribe, with seed money from Time Warner Foundation. “It’s a small tribe but they’ve been extremely supportive,” said Tracy Rector, executive director and co-founder of Longhouse Media. “The first year they spent $25,000 on equipment. It shows their commitment to the youth, the community and the program.”

Longhouse Media’s mission is to catalyze indigenous people and communities to use media as a tool for self-expression, cultural preservation and social change, she said. It draws from traditional and modern forms of artistic expression, storytelling, teaching and inquiry. Rector, an accomplished filmmaker who co-produced the PBS documentary “Teachings of the Tree People: The Work of Bruce Miller,” said Longhouse Media and Native Lens were founded to respond to the lack of positive images and role models for youth in mainstream media, where Native Americans are typically absent or stereotyped as violent drunks or all-knowing sages. “We are not seen as doctors, lawyers, or businessmen. The message this sends to Native American children is that there is no place for us in modern society, that we are an antiquated culture,” she said.

Native Lens uses technology to correct this misperception. Rector said Longhouse Media Artistic Director Annie Silverstein, whose pieces have been shown at the Seattle Art Museum, on public television and in international film festivals, started planning with the Swinomish Tribe in 2003 to bring film making to young people. “It included workshops on the reservation that lasted three to six months and also workshops in Seattle. Those were called Full Circle gatherings,” Rector said. Students came from as far as Red Lake, Minn., to learn from mentors like Sherman Alexie and Cody Lightning. Clark was one of the first students. “Nick was really part of the very beginning, part of the group that helped form the program,” Rector said. He had taken acting classes at Everett and performed in a play about the Maiden of Deception Pass when he first heard of Native Lens. He came in because “I just liked acting,” he said. Clark’s first finished piece was a public service announcement about stereotypes called “Native Pride.” Soon he found himself engrossed in all aspects of film making, and now he helps inspire new students. “Nick has also been a peer mentor for youth,” Rector said. The program quickly expanded with funding from such sources as the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, which awarded Native Lens $50,000 for 2008, the First Nations Development Institute and the Potlatch Fund.

It now serves about 25 students at Swinomish and more than 500 students at reservations such as Suquamish, Tulalip, Lummi and Muckelshoot. A key to the program’s success is that it comes to the students, rather than asking them to go to Seattle. “I think it makes a big difference,” Rector said. The Swinomish students have excelled, and “March Point” is Native Lens’ most successful project so far. It tells the history of the area and the story of environmental deterioration of its land and water.