4 reviews
Very Unusual for the Time and Even Now
Story of life on an Indian reservation in the Southwest.
Unusual tale of an Indian boy that rejects the white man's schooling on a Navajo reservation. Most of the actors are real Navajos. Cinematogropher Virgil Miller won accolades for his work on this one.
Nominated For Two Oscars
Francis Kee Teller's father has gone off and is now living with a White women. When his mother and grandfather die, young Teller goes in search of people to help burn them, in the manner of his people. But he is taken to the school run by the White people for children on the reservation.
This was nominated for two Academy Awards, probably a first for a Lippert release. Virgil Miller's black-and-white camerawork well deserves the nomination, with its stark and beautiful images of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and his portrait shots. It was also nominated for Best Documentary feature, and here I have my doubts. It is a story documentary, like Nanook of the North, and that sort of documentary was being replaced by a different form, more anthropological in nature. There's a good helping of that here in writer-director Norman Foster's feature. Still, the images and the glimpses in Navajo mythology is definitely worth your while.
This was nominated for two Academy Awards, probably a first for a Lippert release. Virgil Miller's black-and-white camerawork well deserves the nomination, with its stark and beautiful images of the Navajo Nation in Arizona and his portrait shots. It was also nominated for Best Documentary feature, and here I have my doubts. It is a story documentary, like Nanook of the North, and that sort of documentary was being replaced by a different form, more anthropological in nature. There's a good helping of that here in writer-director Norman Foster's feature. Still, the images and the glimpses in Navajo mythology is definitely worth your while.