Reel Injun (2010)

Reel Injun is a 2009 Canadian documentary film directed by Cree filmmaker 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 many stereotypes about Natives in film, from the Noble savage to the Drunken Indian. It profiles such figures as Iron Eyes Cody, who as an Italian American 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.

Synopsis

Le réalisateur Neil Diamond, lui-même Indien Cree, donne la parole à des gens de cinéma connus pour leur regard acéré sur l'image et la place des Amérindiens dans le western américain : les cinéastes Clint Eastwood, Zacharias Kunuk et Jim Jarmusch, les acteurs Wes Studi et Graham Greene.

Actors