Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World

(Paperback)

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Description

Native Features is the first book to look at feature films made by Indigenous people, one of the world's newest and fastest growing categories of cinema. The book provides easy to understand guidelines to help viewers appreciate the more than 50 Indigenous features now in circulation. Native Features shows how movies made by Native peoples throughout the world often strengthen older cultures while they simultaneously correct stereotypes found in non-Indigenous films. The book focuses on well-known films, such as Rabbit-Proof Fence, Smoke Signals, and Whale Rider, as well as on many films seldom seen beyond the regions where they were made. Separate chapters trace the exemplary careers of Cheyenne and Arapaho director Chris Eyre and of Australian Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil. There are chapters as well that look at Indigenous feature films by region. These detail how individual Indigenous films fit within the distinctive film histories of the Arctic, Australia, Oceania, and North America. As the first extended study of the recent global explosion of Indigenous cinema, Native Features provides pioneering ways of thinking about these films that will likely shape discussions for decades to come.

Reviews

"Libraries strong in international film and culture need Houston Wood's Native Features: Indigenous Films from Around the World...the first book to examine films made by indigenous people. It analyzes over fifty such films now in circulation, considering cultural stereotypes, and impact of both well-known and seldom-seen films, and considering the careers of major actors and directors. Both a aregional and world-wide approach allows for an outstanding series of perspectives." -Midwest Book Review, (The Bookwatch), December 2008

Author Bio

After spending many years as a macadamia nut farmer, Houston Wood earned his PhD in English from the University of Hawaii in 1996 and now teaches at HawaiiPacificUniversity. His previous publications include The Reality of Ethnomethodology (with Hugh Mehan), Wiley Interscience; Displacing Natives: The Rhetorical Production of Hawai'i, Rowman and Littlefield; various journal article and book chapters.