A Good Day to Die
Directed by: David Mueller and Lynn Salt
USA | 90 minutes | Unrated
Screening | Friday, February 3, 2012, 7pm - 9pm |
Dennis Banks co-founded the American Indian Movement (A.I.M.) in 1968 to call attention to the plight of urban Indians in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The film presents an intimate look at Dennis Banks' life beginning with his early experience in boarding schools, through his military service in Japan, his transformative experience in Stillwater State Prison and subsequent founding of a movement that, through confrontational actions in Washington DC, Custer South Dakota and Wounded Knee, changed the lives of American Indians forever.
The film will be followed by a discussion with Michelle Raheja, Associate Professor of English at University of California Riverside, who specializes in Native American and early American literature and visual culture. Her book, Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film, examines images of Indigenous peoples in Hollywood and independent film from the silent era to the present.
"A wonderful, sorrowful, compelling film. From classrooms of fear and forced assimilation, to the climactic stand-off at Wounded Knee, it is an essential chapter in the all-too- infrequently told tale of those who can truly call this continent home."
- Ken Burns
Shown in conjunction with Tahquitz - a Culver Atrium installation and performance by artist Lewis deSoto and mezzo-soprano Erin Neff - which tells the Cahuilla Creation Story.
Discussion follows the film led by UCR Associate Professor Michelle Rahej who specializes in Native American and early American literature and visual culture.
Winner Best Documentary, Deadcenter and Santa Cruz, 2011
