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INDIGENOUS FILM-FILMMAKER SALUTE

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INDIGENOUS FILM-FILMMAKER SALUTE
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LegacyKeepersRus honors CHARLIE SOAP with a Legend Award for his legacy preservation of his wife/partner-WILMA MANKILLER via film as Producer & Director of "Cherokee Word for Water" & and as Producer of "Mankiller", Directed by Bare Bones Film Festival Alumni & Trailblazer (2006) VALERIE RED-HORSE .

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The work that led Wilma Mankiller to become the first modern female Chief of the Cherokee Nation.

Set in the early 1980s, The Cherokee Word for Water begins in the homes of a small town in rural Oklahoma where many houses lack running water and others are little more than shacks. The movie is told from the perspective of Wilma Mankiller and full-blood Cherokee organizer Charlie Soap who join forces to battle opposition and build a 16-mile waterline system using a community of volunteers. In the process, they inspire the townspeople to trust each other, to trust their way of thinking, and to spark a reawakening of the universal indigenous values of reciprocity and interconnectedness.

This project also inspired a self-help movement in Indian Country that continues to this day. The movie is dedicated to Wilma Mankiller's vision, compassion and incredible grace.

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CLICK IMAGE FOR BACKGROUND VIDEO

Background on the Bell Waterline Project that is the inspiration for the feature film the Cherokee Word for Water. The project took place in Bell, a rural settlement of approximately 300 people, almost all of whom where bilingual Cherokee people.The Bell community eventually built a 16-mile water line, rehabilitated 20 houses and built 25 new houses using volunteer labor.

The project strengthened the bonds between community members and gave them a sense of control
over their lives. They learned to trust their own thinking, beliefs, and ability to create change.

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CHARLIE SOAP is a producer and director, known for The Cherokee Word for Water (2013) and Mankiller (2017).

CHARLIE SOAP'S LEGACYKEEPERSRUS LEGEND AWARD.

I want the Cherokee people to be proud of their nation, culture, language and heritage, Soap said. I want each of us to have a strong feeling of ownership and not feel alienated from our own tribe.

Mankiller is credited with bringing a breath of fresh air to the Cherokee Nation during her terms as chief. With funds from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, she promoted community-oriented development projects.

The projects included establishing tribally-owned businesses, improving infrastructure and building a hydroelectric facility.

Soap played a big role in establishing the Boys and Girls Club in Tahlequah. The club developed from a youth-led program Soap started in Cherry Tree during his community service days, he said.

Soap facilitated a group of youths, helping them organize and elect officers to represent their interests. Through their work, they were able to build a gymnasium and a ball field in Cherry Tree, Soap said.

I'd like to see more efforts put to youths, he said. A lot don't have jobs or something to keep them busy, so you see a lot of problems.

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AWARD WINNING INDIGENOUS FILMMAKERS FROM THE BARE BONES INTERNATIONAL FILM & MUSIC FESTIVAL AND DOCUMENTARY FESTIVALS

NATIVE VISION AWARDEES
LEGACYKEEPERS-R-US AWARDEES
BEST CULTURAL DOCUMENTARY
BEST ANIMATION
MUSIC MUSIC DOCUMENTARY

SHELBY TSIOWERI:IOHSTA ADAMS & JOANNE STORKAN

IMDB.COM-SHELBY ADAMS

Shelby Tsioweri:iohsta Adams is a director from the Akwesasne Mohawk Indian Reservation and co-owner of Dreamcatcher Studio, a production studio that offers a variety of services for native productions, in theatre, commercial, and film production. She has studied directing, acting, and performing arts throughout Canada.



Joanne Storkan is the founder and executive producer of Honest Engine Films. Formerly a journalism and English teacher, turned screenwriter, she founded the company in 2004, in Monterey, California. She co-directed a documentary entitled Dirt McComber: Last of the Mohicans, that has won numerous awards.

WWW.IMDB.COM-JOANNE STORKAN

IMDB.COM-ROOTS OF LACROSSE

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Click image to view trailer
ROOTS OF LACROSSE (2020)

Many lacrosse players and coaches often don't know that the origins of the game of lacrosse has it's roots in North American Indigenous nations.This short documentary provides a brief history of the sacred and cultural aspects of this sport, originally played for the Creator, as well as for the health and welfare of the people. The movie also defines the three types of North American, Indigenous lacrosse: Iroquois, Great Lakes, and Southeastern.

VINCE FONTAINE

VINCE FONTAINE is a musician, producer, and festival curator based in Winnipeg, Canada and one of Canada's most important Indigenous composers. Celebrated for his creative direction of multi-award winning band Eagle & Hawk and his talented collective Indian City, Fontaine's career abounds with awards and recognition.

Vince Fontaine is a musician, producer, and festival curator based in Winnipeg, Canada and one of Canada;s most important Indigenous composers. Celebrated for his creative direction of multi-award winning band Eagle & Hawk and his talented collective Indian City, Fontaine's career abounds with awards and recognition.

Fontaine began as a guitar player and in 1994, teamed up with Winnipeg Blue Bombers kicker Troy Westwood. Together Fontaine and Westwood formed the basis of what would be Canada's most celebrated and internationally toured Indigenous band, Eagle & Hawk.

IMDB.COM-ANDREW WALL, Writer, Director, Editor

IMDB.COM-EAGLE & HAWK

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CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW DOC ON YOUTUBE.

https://www.indigenousmusic.ca/vincefontaine

More BIO on Vince

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EAGLE AND HAWK TAKE THE STAGE (2020) Click image for Trailer

Music Documentary explores the world through the eyes of one of Canada's longest running Indigenous bands.

AL MERTENS

Al Mertens is a prolific writer and director hailing from Oklahoma. His often darkly humorous stories vividly explore the underside of human nature within society, and have won numerous awards worldwide. "Lord Finn" is his feature directorial debut. His most recent movie feature screenplays include: "Angel City," "Transgressions," and the #1 Amazon best-selling published script, "Thank You, Amelia Earhart."

LORD FINN (2020)

Daniel Finley, a mentally-ill Native American of mixed race, struggles to reconcile love versus inner trauma, as do a storytelling female inmate, and a prostitute and car thief in a hotel suite.

IMDB.COM-LORD FINN

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Click image for Video Message from Al Mertens about the Bare Bones International Film & Music Festival.

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Click image to view trailer

SAM VINAL

Sam Vinal is an award-winning filmmaker who directs documentaries made in deep partnership with social movements. These bold works are housed in the Los Angeles based production company Mutual Aid Media, an independent entity for creativity and speaking truth to power through film.

IMDB.COM-SAM VINAL

WATER IS LIFE: FROM STANDING ROCK TO THE SWAMP (2020)
On the banks of Louisiana, fierce Indigenous women are ready to fight to stop the corporate blacksnake and preserve their way of life. They are risking everything to protect Mother Earth from the predatory fossil fuel companies that seek to poison it.

IMDB.COM-WATER IS LIFE

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click image to view trailer

JOSEPH ERB

Joseph Erb (born 1974) is a Native American computer animator, educator, and artist and a member of the Cherokee Nation. Director, Animator, Producer

IMDB.COM-JOSEPH ERB

WATER IS LIFE (2020)
An animated film that talks about the issue of the Standing Rock Sioux Nation and their struggle to survive as they try to protect the water source into their small nation. Narrated by The Standing Rock Chairman.

IMDB.COM-WATER IS LIFE

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Click image for Joseph Erb video about storytelling using animation.

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Click image to view animation DOC on youtube

MINISA CRUMBO-HALSEY
SPIRIT TALK: WOODY CRUMBO Directed by MINISA CRUMBO

A 1978 inductee into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Crumbo became an 'ambassador of good will' for Oklahoma in 1982 under appointment by Governor George Nigh.

SPIRIT TALK, a film by Minisa Crumbo-Halsey about the life and times of Woody Crumbo, a renowned artist... Minisa's first, and most influencial art teacher was her father.
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Click image to view Minisa interview

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Click image to view DOC on youtube.

SPIRIT TALK, a film by Minisa Crumbo-Halsey about the life and times of Woody Crumbo, a renowned artist... Minisa's first, and most influencial art teacher was her father.

Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Crumbo (January 21,1912-April 4, 1989) was a Citizens Band Potawatomi artist, flute maker and dancer. His paintings are held by The Gilcrease Museum, the Philbrook Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Koshare Indian Museum, the Wichita Indian Center and many others.

MARK D. WILLIAMS
MARK WILLIAMS is a writer and director from Oklahoma, and is a full-blood Choctaw indigenous American.

This fact influenced the name of his production company, Native Boy Productions LLC. His short and feature length films have won several awards including those from the Red Fork Film Festival, Mvskoke Film Festival, Red Dirt International Film Festival, Gallup Film Festival, Eye Catcher International Film Festival, Bare Bones International Film & Music Festival and the Native American Film Festival of the Southwest.

Categories include Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Editing and Best Cinematography.

IMDB.COM-Mark D. Williams

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WARRIOR COACH is about a small Native American school in Wewoka, Oklahoma known for producing big basketball talent with a style of play commonly referred to as "Rez Ball". Led by Coach Chris Jones (Choctaw/Kiowa/Apache), the Justice Warriors compete for the 2020 ORES State title once again.

RODERICK POCAWATCHIT

Rodrick Pocowatchit is a Wichita, KS-based filmmaker and writer whose goal is to see more Native Americans represented in popular culture. He is Comanche, Pawnee and Shawnee, and has produced, written, directed and starred in four independent feature films, including the zombie cult hit The Dead Can't Dance and his latest, Red Hand, a Native time-travel mashup.

Rod is an alumnus of the Sundance Institute's renowned screenwriting program and received a directing fellowship with the L.A. SkinsFest and CBS in Los Angeles. Rod is also a film columnist for The Wichita Eagle newspaper in Kansas.

IMDB.COM-RODRICK POCAWATCHIT

RED HAND (2019)
A man with the power to heal time travels from the future to save the Native American race.

IMDB.COM-RED HAND

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Click image to view trailer

BECKY HOBBS

Becky Hobbs is a writer and casting director, known for Nanyehi (2018), The Women of Country (1993) and Sing Country (1971). Is also a descendant of Nancy Ward.

NANYEHI Written by Becky Hobbs, Holly Rice & Nick Sweet

Directed by Holly Rice.

Elderly Cherokee woman, Nanyehi, is visited by spirits of her past as she struggles with a very important decision that will affect the Cherokee people.

IMDB.COM-NANEYHI

IMDB.COM-BECKY HOBBS

IMDB.COM-HOLLY RICE

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CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW

CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW TRAILER
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Short film trailer about Nanyehi who was a Cherokee war woman turned peacemaker in the 1700's. Known to the whites as Nancy Ward, she risked her life to make peace between the Cherokees and all others, and most importantly the early Americans.

JILL SCOTT MOMADAY

IMDB.COM-JILL MOMADAY

RETURN TO RAINY MOUNTAIN (2017)

Directed by JILL MOMADAY

Based on the life of Pulitzer Prize winning author, N. Scott Momaday, and seen through the lens of filmmaker daughter, Jill Momaday, they retrace the route of his bestselling book, The Way to Rainy Mountain, visiting sacred Kiowa ancestral sites that inform the ancient myths, legends and oral traditions

IMDB.COM-RETURN TO RAINY MOUNTAIN

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Jill Momaday is a mother, actor, writer, and filmmaker whose film, Return to Rainy Mountain (PBS), documents her Kiowa heritage and life in the arts as the daughter of Pulitzer Prize-winning author, N. Scott Momaday. Raised in an artistic and literary family, Jill studied theater in Santa Fe, New Mexico and modeled in New York and Paris.

CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW TRAILER
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Click image to view

MOLLIANNE "MOLLI" CAMERON
LAKOTA GIRLS (2017)

This is a historical drama about Mato Win, an eight-year-old Native American girl who lives at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. After her parents are critically injured in an accident, she is sent to live with a white family at a horse ranch in the Black Hills. She stays with Clara, an eight-year-old white girl and her family, but Mato Win is determined to get back to the reservation.

IMDB.COM-LAKOTA GIRLS

IMDB.COM-MOLLI CAMERON

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I am honored to participate in the Bare Bones International Film Festival with Lakota Girls.

This film is unlike any other Narrative Feature I have seen about Native Americans. All of the actors who portray the Lakota are Native and live in South Dakota. It is a family-friendly film, which inspires us to open our hearts to those who are different from us. We may be more alike than we imagined.

I have a B.S. in Business/Marketing from Indiana University and find the promotional side of filmmaking just as inspiring as the production side.

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CLICK IMAGE TO VIEW TRAILER

VALERIE RED-HORSE

Valerie Red-Horse (born 1959, in California) is an investment banker, business owner, filmmaker and philanthropist of Cherokee heritage. She is a former CEO of two Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) broker/dealers, Native Nations Securities and Red-Horse Securities believed to be the first Native American female owned broker-dealers.

IMDB.COM-VALERIE RED-HORSE

www.valerieredhorse.com

IMDB.COM-MANKILLER

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CLICK TO VIEW TRAILER
MANKILLER (2017)
Directed by Valerie Red-Horse
Produced by Charlie Soap

An in-depth look at the life and work of Cherokee Nation Chief, WILMA MANKILLER.

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Directors:Jennifer Wynne FarmerValerie Red-Horse
Writer:Valerie Red-Horse
Stars:Valerie Red-Horse Yvonne Russo Irene Bedard

Three Native American sisters (Red-Horse, Bedard, Guerrero) decide to try to sell a line of cosmetics they call Naturally Native, based on old tribal remedies, only to have to fight an uphill battle with racist business people. The film is actually Red-Horse's comment on her fight with the movie industry to get her films made and this film is the first to be totally financed by an Indian tribe, Connecticut's Mashantucket tribe.

CADE THOMAS

Cade Thomas is an up-and-coming filmmaker from Tulsa, Oklahoma. With background in broadcasting, he has won several state awards for his documentary and radio work. Cade grew up creating YouTube videos and shooting short films. His most viewed YouTube video is (Tulsa Underground), a short documentary about the history of the tunnel system beneath downtown Tulsa, which has received over 200,000 views.

A Cherokee Nation citizen, Cade works for the marketing team of his tribe's business operations as a digital content creator. He is continuing to create unexpected films and challenging documentaries that defy traditional genre tropes and expectations.

IMDB.COM

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CADE THOMAS

In 2019, Cade Thomas wrote, directed, shot, edited, and produced his first feature film; titled RIBBON. The film is deceptively bubblegum, straddling the line between broad comedy and personal tragedy before plunging oppositely on both ends of the spectrum.

During the global pandemic, Cade virtually premiered Laura, a two-part true crime series that shed new light on a four decade old cold case. Containing four interviews of people who were deeply connected to the case, the series reveals secrets that had never been shared to the public before.

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RIBBON Directed by CADE THOMAS
Two siblings face adulthood in modern corporate America.
Naïve and trusting Maggie is down on her luck and asks her big brother Michael if she can bunk at his place for a few days while she gets herself back on her feet. When Maggie learns of a Ribbon Dancing Competition at the local mall, she sees it as a quick way to make some money, all she needs is a partner. And lucky for her, the homeless woman who lives in the mall parking lot is a professional dancer and is willing to help her out.

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