2 – 4 PM

Indigenous Voices in Film explores and highlights the work of Indigenous peoples at the intersection of film, video art, and media arts. Supported by a generous grant from the Terra Foundation for American Art to broaden the understanding of American art history, this project is committed to presenting films and video art created by Indigenous peoples along with advancing critical discussion of these works in the region and within the museum field.  

The series finale brings together board members, filmmakers, and the community for a public forum to discuss the evolution and future of this critical project. Public participation in the forum is encouraged!

Program Participants:

Roberto Fatal
Roberto Fatal [they/them/ellos] is a Meztize Chicana filmmaker and storyteller. They come from Rarámuri, Tewa Pueblo, Ute, and Spanish ancestry. Their Queer, gender fluid, Mestize/Mixed identity informs the sci-fi, films they make. Their work centers on humans who sit at the intersections of time, space and culture. From this unique vantage point, these characters can bridge divides, see all sides, find new paths forward and recall multiple histories long forgotten. The mixed people of Fatal’s stories can connect us deeply to an undercurrent of humanity that we often overlook in a world that is increasingly divided. Survival, intersectional identity, perseverance, love, empathy, community, connection and creation are at the heart of their characters and films. Fatal is a Sundance Film Institute Native Film Lab Fellow Alum and an Imagine Native Director's Lab feature film fellow alum. Their debut feature script, ELECTRIC HOMIES, was selected by GLAAD x The Black List as one of the best unproduced.

Maya Austin
Maya Austin (Pascua Yaqui/Blackfeet)is co-coordinator of the Indigenous Voices in Film project. Her focus is to identify and support emerging Indigenous filmmakers and content creators across the US and globally. She’s served previously as Senior Manager for the Native American and Indigenous Program at Sundance Institute, as the Vice-Chair for Vision Maker Media, which empowers and engages Native Peoples to tell their stories for public television, as well as Grants Manager for the National NAGPRA Program, the Southern Ute Cultural Center & Museum, the Academy Film Archive, and the UCLA Cataloging and Metadata Center. She is a graduate of the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) with degrees in History, Film and Moving Image Archive Studies.

Colleen Thurston
Colleen Thurston is an award-winning media producer and documentary filmmaker from Tulsa, Oklahoma. As an Indigenous non-fiction storyteller, her films explore the relationships between humans and the natural world and focus on Native stories and perspectives. She holds an MFA from Montana State University’s Science and Natural History Filmmaking program, where she also earned a graduate certificate in American Indian Studies. Colleen has produced work for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, illumiNATIVE and museums, public television stations, and federal and tribal organizations. She produced and directed short documentaries for four seasons of the Cherokee Nation’s series, “Osiyo, Voices of the Cherokee People,” earning two Emmy awards for her work on the series.

Free for everyone. Advance registration recommended.