Cinema Politica: Reel Injun

Reel Injun is a 2009 Canadian documentary film directed by Cree filmmakers Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge, and Jeremiah Hayes that explores the portrayal of Native Americans in film. Reel Injun is illustrated with excerpts from classic and contemporary portrayals of Native people in Hollywood movies and interviews with filmmakers, actors and film historians, while director Diamond travels across the United States to visit iconic locations in motion picture as well as American Indian history.

Reel Injun explores the various stereotypes about Natives in film, from the noble savage to the drunken Indian. It profiles such figures as Iron Eyes Cody, an Italian American who reinvented himself as a Native American on screen. The film also explores Hollywood's practice of using Italian Americans and American Jews to portray Indians in the movies and reveals how some Native American actors made jokes in their native tongue on screen when the director thought they were simply speaking gibberish.

The film was inspired, in part, by Neil Diamond's own experiences as a child in Waskaganish, Quebec, where he and other Native children would play cowboys and Indians after local screenings of Westerns in their remote community. Diamond remembers that although the children were Indians, they all wanted to be cowboys. When Diamond was older, he would be questioned by non-Native people about whether his people lived in teepees and rode horses, causing him to realize that their preconceptions about Native people were also derived from movies.

About Cinema Politica:
Cinema Politica is a non-profit media arts organization dedicated to supporting the work of independent, political filmmakers. CP is headquartered in Canada with local chapters that organise screenings all around the world. The Faculty of Arts is proud to host the Cinema Politica Groningen chapter.

Cinema Politica offers films on a wide variety of themes: Human rights, politics, globalisation, art, activism, refugee/migrants, war/conflict, social movements and many more.

Here at the Faculty of Arts, we will choose titles that have a relation to the research being done at our faculty in particular. All of the documentaries are in English or include English subtitles. Our screenings are free and open to all. After each film, we host a lively discussion with experts from the Faculty of Arts and beyond, followed by Q&A for audience questions.

Stay updated on upcoming screenings by following us on Instagram: @cpgroningen.

The Cinema Politica series is made possible by the Public Events Programme from the Faculty of Arts.

Interested in teaming up with one of our next political documentary screenings? We love to collaborate with experts and community members from the area. Send an email to: cinemapolitica@rug.nl