Triton film teacher shoots a doc about Native Americans
<h3 class="briefHead">Triton teacher directs Native American doc</h3>
Oak Park resident Seth McClellan teaches film history and video production at Triton College in River Grove. He's also a documentary filmmaker whose third movie "Little Wound's Warriors" will play one time at 7:45 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 21, at the Gene Siskel Film Center in Chicago.
The movie, winner of the Best Public Service Award at the 41st annual American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, looks at Native American high school students born and raised on South Dakota's Pine Ridge Reservation, and examines why the young students - particularly girls - have such a shockingly high suicide rate.
"Once you understand their history," McClellan told the Daily Herald, "you begin to understand their cultural problems."
Up until the 1970s, members of the Lakota tribe were banned from speaking their native language or practicing their cultural ceremonies.
In the movie, interviews with Lakota tribe members (this was the group favorably depicted in Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning "Dances With Wolves") are captured in inspiring, painterly images shot by McClellan himself.
He has made two earlier films - "King in Chicago" and "Creative Writing" - in which he concentrated mostly on their ideas. For "Little Wound's Warriors," he wanted to do more.
"I focused on the aesthetics in this movie more," he said. "I wanted to make this world look striking and beautiful with its wind-whipped, harsh terrain."
Go to siskelfilmcenter.org/littlewoundswarriors for information and to purchase tickets.
<h3 class="briefHead">'Patriots' daze</h3>
I saw a critics screening of the fact-based Boston Marathon bombing thriller "Patriots Day" shortly before it opened. In one key scene, the suspected bomber's wife, Katherine Russell (a white Muslim convert portrayed by Melissa Benoist), gets interrogated by a federal agent about her husband.
"What about my rights?" the woman asks. The interrogator coldly responds, in so many words, what rights?
Audience members around me at Chicago's River East 21 Theaters went nuts, applauding and cheering - applauding and cheering that a government law enforcement official had just stripped an American citizen of the basic rights guaranteed to all of us.
Granted, "Patriots Day" manipulated viewers into this reaction. It's a movie, after all. The audience roared its approval for law enforcement to do the expedient thing for its investigation.
Consequently, the audience also roared its approval for law enforcement to suspend the supreme law of the land for the sake of expedience during the heat of the hunt.
The fierce reaction poses a provocative philosophical question: Would American moviegoers prefer to stand for their emotions rather than the principles for which America stands?
• Dann in Reel Life publishes every Friday in Time out!