“I’ve been teaching “American Indian in the Cinema” for going on 30 years, and people have asked me, what’s the solution to some of these problems?” said Buffalohead. “And it’s contemporary representations. The big theme that you walk away from my course with is that most of our images are stuck in time, meaning that they’re somewhere in the past. People don’t see us as contemporary—they see us as these images in the old West and very much stereotypes of plains or southwest Indians. They don’t see the real diversity of Indigenous people in the Americas.”

The conversation with anchor Aliyah Chavez also touched on expanding representations in television through shows like “Rutherford Falls” and “Reservation Dogs,” translation of major films into the Navajo and Comanche languages, and Professor Marubbio’s work on representations of Native women in film. Find the full interview in the ICT newscast archive (segment begins at 6:15).

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In the article, “Adam Sandler movie flap sparks debate over American Indian roles in media,” Marubbio explained that tribes of the Great Plains often are portrayed living in Monument Valley – the legendary site of many John Wayne-John Ford movies, which is located on the Arizona-Colorado border, largely on the Navajo reservation.

to learn more.

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Kuoth Wiel ’13 visits Twin Cities for advance screening of ‘The Good Lie’

Augsburg alumna Kuoth Wiel ’13 finished the final semester of her undergraduate education from afar, trading the College’s Minneapolis campus for film sets in Georgia and South Africa. Wiel is featured in a supporting role in “The Good Lie,” a drama about refugees from Sudan learning to navigate life in the United States with the help of a character played by Oscar winner Reese Witherspoon.

Wiel, a psychology major with Sudanese heritage, has been touring to promote “The Good Lie” since the film premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in early September. She will introduce the Twin Cities’ first screening of “The Good Lie” on October 14, and the Augsburg College community has been invited to take part in the event. Auggies also can acquire free tickets to an advance screening on October 16.

Ticket information is posted in the October 10 edition of Augsburg’s Daily A-mail.

To learn more about the film, visit thegoodliemovie.com/.

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Four Augsburg photography students served as OverExposure mentors to help teach black and white photography to 11 teens from Raices/Roots, a youth development program for high-risk Latino youth offered through Centro.

Meeting at Augsburg twice weekly from July 5 to August 11, students learned the technical and artistic skills required to properly expose, develop, and print black and white film and the vocabulary needed to articulate and write a statement of their completed work. Using themes of identity, culture, and places as assignments, students created a portfolio of prints that was presented at Centro on August 12, 2011.

Centro students expressed outcomes that included understanding patience, learning new skills, looking at the world through a different lens and appreciating the amount of work good photographs require. By serving as mentors, Augsburg students developed leadership skills and a broader understanding of the Centro community.

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Though Ben did not start out studying film at Augsburg (his first major was psychology), his first filmmaking course showed him that all he wanted to do was make films. “I realized that [making films] made me happy, and I would not be happy unless I was making films.”

Ben’s passion for film helped him finish all of the film production courses at Augsburg by the end of his junior year. For his senior year independent project, Ben worked with Professor Ellenwood and researched the documentation needed to produce an independent feature. Working with a 90-page script, Ben created a scene-by-scene breakdown of the script , a shooting schedule, a budget, and a business plan. The final production book was over 100 pages long. He remarked, “The best part about it was that it was for a real feature film. And I recently traveled to Los Angeles [where I] presented my project to the writer. That was a really fulfilling experience.”

“Bits” is the first film by Minneapolis-based FRD Productions. To create the film, an entirely local cast and crew of over 50 people relied on intuition, collaboration, and improvisation rather than traditional narrative methods.

If you plan on seeing the screening, the Uptown Theater is located at the corner of Hennepin Avenue and Lagoon in Uptown Minneapolis. Doors to the sneak preview screening open at 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 22. Admittance is free of charge. For more information, go to www.bitsmovie.com, or contact Ben Katz at (651) 249-4154.

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The idea for the trip began when deVries joined a Lilly grant-sponsored trip in Europe to study Martin Luther and the Reformation. There she met tour director Andreas Brecht, and the two discovered a common interest in post-World War II history.

Back at Augsburg, deVries shared her idea for a study abroad program with English and film instructor Bob Cowgill. The two created a curriculum combining post-modern film and literature to explore themes such as of the construction of memory, the discovery of moral lessons through art, and attempts to preserve the past.

“In Germany, the themes of division and reunification scream at you in the face,” said deVries. The aftermath of WWII is visible, from the bullet holes and graffiti that remain in the Reichstag to the building’s new mirrored glass dome, designed in the late 1990s by architect Norman Foster to symbolize Germany’s reunification.

Cowgill encouraged students to reflect on how horror has been commemorated in literature but also in places like the Jewish Museum, the Holocaust Memorial, and Auschwitz. There is a difference, he said, between a personal narrative that generates an emotional response and a rigorous analysis that asks the reader, or viewer, to come to his or her own realization.

Gabrielle Miller is a senior communications major who had never been to Europe before this opportunity. She wanted to learn about the Holocaust because she said, “I couldn’t believe that someone could hate another person so much just because of their religion, that they would want to kill them.” Seeing places like Auschwitz firsthand gave Miller a better understanding of life before and after the war.

“It’s one thing to read about history; it’s another to walk were the famous politicians, heroes, villains, geniuses, and musicians walked. You get an experience that can’t be equaled in the classroom,” Miller said.

Fifth-year elementary education major Teresa Barnhill went because WWII history has always been one of her favorite subjects. She’d also never been out of the country. “I was never interested in studying abroad until this trip came around,” she said. For Barnhill, the two-week trip was the best way for her to travel and study.

“Short-term study abroad programs are perfect for students who are working and paying bills, and even for students who want to travel but are apprehensive about being away from home for too long,” said Barnhill. She said she is looking forward to her next adventure, perhaps a trip to Japan.

The group toured the cities of Berlin, Leipzig, Wittenberg, and Dresden in Germany; Krakow and Auschwitz/Birkenau in Poland; and Theresienstadt and Prague in the Czech Republic. In addition to visiting memorials and museums, they also enjoyed sightseeing excursions and wonderful German and Polish meals, deVries said.

“WWII and its Aftermath” was a short-term study abroad program through Augsburg Abroad. For information about future trips or faculty resources for creating a short-term experience, go to .

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Augsburg graduate and film minor JoLynn Garnes ’02 was up for the challenge.

At Augsburg, JoLynn studied studio art and film before film was a major. She got to know 16mm film teacher Phil Harder very well, who is also a well-known music video director. This relationship would prove integral to JoLynn’s future projects.

JoLynn also actively participated in Augsburg’s Film Club, making short films with full crews of some Twin Cities professionals. On one of the shoots, JoLynn met film editor Joe Martin, who later hired her as an assistant editor.

Her connections with Twin Cities filmmakers led to editing music videos for Harder Fuller Films, which in turn led to her name being recommended to director Bradley Beesley who was searching for an editor to edit his 30 years of footage into a documentary.

“Without ever meeting the director, or even really knowing what I was doing on that level of editing, I got the job,” remembers JoLynn. “They had a lot of trust in me, which was great. But, it was also the scariest and most difficult thing in my life. I was basically thrown into a sink or swim situation, and I swam furiously… Once I got into it, it became obsessive for me. A year and a half later, I had finished editing my first feature film.”

JoLynn’s résumé also includes music videos for artists such as Liz Phair, Prince, and Hilary Duff, commercials for Target, and another feature documentary called Summercamp!, which screened at the Toronto Film Festival. She is currently working on the backing video visuals for Beyoncé’s 2007 world tour.

“My best experience so far is a tie between both of the premiers for The Fearless Freaks and Summercamp!,” states JoLynn. “There’s nothing quite like being in a sold out cinema and watching your film alongside of hundreds of others for the first time… I love what I do, and working so hard for it is worth it.”

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