Eagle Song

A Music Video featuring Joy Harjo performing her poem, “Eagle Poem”

Funded by Native American Public Telecommunications, a native media organization that, among other things, funds the production of programming by and about Native Americans for national PBS, this short film is a music video featuring Mvskoke/Creek musician and poet Joy Harjo. Archival footage is mixed with contemporary scenes to create a context for themes that speak to the continuity of Muscogean tradition through the generations. The video opens with a Creek prayer which leads into Joy Harjo's performance of her poem, "Eagle Poem" and ends with her sax solo.

Directed and produced by Native Hawaiian filmmaker Lurline Wailana McGregor in collaboration with Joy Harjo, Eagle Song was nominated for an award at the prestigious Native American Indian Film and Video Festival in San Francisco in 2002 and has been screened in many film festivals nationally and internationally. Lurline McGregor has produced many award winning videos, primarily about her own Native Hawaiian community. Joy Harjo, best known for her poetry and music, co-wrote the script for the signature film,
A Thousand Roads opened Spring 2005 at the National Museum to the American Indian on the Washington, D.C. mall.

DVD trt 2:54

Director/Producer: Lurline McGregor
Co-Producer/Writer/Composer: Joy Harjo

For distribution information, contact Mekko Productions, Inc. at wailanaone@earthlink.net

A Thousand Roads

(2005, 40 min.)


US Director: Chris Eyre (Cheyenne/Arapaho)
Written by: Scott Garen and Joy Harjo (Muscogee Creek)
Produced for the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian
Executive Producers: W. Richard West, Jr. (Southern Cheyenne) and Peter Guber
Producers: Barry Clark and Scott Garen
Director of Photography: Claudio Miranda
Original Music composed by Lisa Gerrard and Jeff Rona
Narrator: John Trudell (Santee Sioux)

Cast in Order of Appearance:
Amanda Cook……………………...Alex Rice (Mohawk)
Dawn Nageak………………………Riana Malabed (Inupiat)
Johnny Chee……………………….Jeremiah Bitsui (Navajo/Omaha)
Johnny's Grandmother…………….Geraldine Keams (Navajo)
Don Santos Condori……………….Honorato Ninantay (Quechua)

A Thousand Roads was photographed in wide-screen Super 35mm and digitally scanned for projection at enhanced 2K resolution.

A Thousand Roads is a fictional work, produced by NMAI to explore the human context of the NMAI's collections. The film is striking visually, and presents through its beauty and its stories an imaginative entry into knowing about Native people living in the vast indigenous geography that comprises the Americas. Rather than presenting a conventional historical perspective, the film is composed of short contemporary fictions about individuals, grounding them in emotional truths to which an audience can easily relate.

The film threads together four stories, taking us into the life of a stressed-out Mohawk stockbroker in Manhattan; a young Inupiat girl sent to live with her grandmother in Barrow, Alaska; a Navajo gang member who must find his core values in his reservation on the mesas of New Mexico; and a Quechua healer in Peru, attempting to save a sick child. Each story explores what it means to belong to a specific community.

Since its world premiere in January 2005 at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, A Thousand Roads has been screened in more than forty venues, throughout the United States and in Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, and—in 2006—Peru

For distribution information, contact Mekko Productions, Inc.  wailanaone@earthlink.net

Awards

•Best Live Short, American Indian Film Festival

•Founder's Award, International Cherokee Film Festival

•Spirit Award for Best in All Categories, Indian Summer Image Awards

•Award of Excellence for Best Feature Film, Indian Summer Image Awards

•Best Dramatic Film, Native Voice Film Festival   

  1. •Best Short Drama, Winnipeg Aboriginal Film and Video Festival   

  2. •Best Actress (Alex Rice), Winnipeg Aboriginal Film and Video Festival

See

Joy Harjo’s Video Diary (CLICK photo)

Joy Harjo’s Video Diary

Mekko Productions, Inc. announces the completion of a short video,
Reality Show A Video Diary of Joy Harjo.

Funded by Native American Public Telecommunications, a native media organization that, among other things, funds the production of programming by and about Native Americans for national PBS, this short film is a video diary of Joy Harjo, cut to the beat of her music. It provides a glimpse of the many activities that make up the life of this well-known Mvskoke/Creek poet and musician and her thoughts behind it all. Greeting the morning from her home in Honolulu, this slice of her life finds her north of the Arctic Circle at the annual Indigenous Riddu Riddu Festival, in Norway, teaching at UCLA, rehearsing and performing with her Mvskoke musician friends, paddling her canoe in Hawai’I and in Albuquerque with her family. Threaded throughout is Joy’s music and sax and the Navajo refrain “Nizhoniigo”, which acknowledges the beauty that surrounds it all.

Directed and produced by Native Hawaiian filmmaker Lurline Wailana McGregor in collaboration with Joy Harjo, this their second video production together. The first was a music video, Eagle Song, which was nominated for an award at the prestigious Native American Indian Film and Video Festival in San Francisco in 2002 and has been screened in many film festivals nationally and internationally. Lurline McGregor has produced many award winning videos, primarily about her own Native Hawaiian community. Joy Harjo, best known for her poetry and music, co-wrote the script for the signature film, A Thousand Roads, which opened in Spring, 2005 at the National Museum to the American Indian on the Washington, D.C. mall.

For distribution information, contact Mekko Productions, Inc.  wailanaone@earthlink.net