Film Project focuses on Natives

By Indianz.com

ALBUQUERQUE — The National Tribal Environmental Council is honored to announce the participation of the prestigious National Geographic All Roads Film Project in the NTEC Global Green Indigenous Film Festival.

The Global Green Indigenous Film Festival will take place in Santa Fe, between April 18 and 20, at the Cinema Café, Center for Contemporary Arts, and N.M. Film Museum Theater. This is the inaugural year of what is slated to become an annual event of major significance. Held in tandem with NTEC's annual Environmental Conference and co-sponsored by the New Mexico Tourism Department and the Jicarilla Apache Nation, the Film Festival adds a new dimension to showcasing the issues, aspirations and innovations of global Indigenous communities in their charge to protect Mother Earth.

The All Roads Film Project is a National Geographic initiative created to provide an international platform for indigenous and underrepresented minority-culture artists to share their cultures, stories, and perspectives through the power of film and photography. Members of its Advisory Board include actors and directors Lou Diamond Phillips, Stockard Channing, Kiefer Sutherland and Spike Lee.

Presentations by the National Geographic All Roads Film Project will both open and close the festival. Opening night, April 18, will feature Kekexili: Mountain Patrol, a Chinese/ Tibetan film directed by Lu Chuan. Experience the unbelievably rugged and death-defying true story of Tibetan volunteers who battle the elements, poachers, and each other in their noble quest to save the Chiru antelope in the inhospitable mountains of Tibet. On closing night, April 20, Arctic Son will be shown. This Canadian/ U.S. documentary directed by Andrew Walton tells the story of Stanley Njootli Jr., who escapes a drug-fueled city life to join his father and his Gwitchin roots in the rugged Arctic, and embarks on a universal quest to discover who he is and where he belongs.

The Director of the National Geographic All Roads Film Project, Francene J. Blythe, states: “We are thrilled to be a part of the Indigenous efforts to reach out to the global community using film as a way to share stories about our environment. The Global Green Indigenous Film Festival is embarking down a path to bring global solutions to climate change through a medium that can reach the masses.”
NTEC and the N.M. tourism department are sponsoring the Global Green Indigenous Film Festival April 18-20, 2008 in Santa Fe.

NTEC’s mission is to support Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages in protecting their environmental resources according to their own priorities and values.