The film threads together four stories, taking us into the life of a stressed-out Mohawk stockbroker in Manhattan; a young Inupiat girl sent to live with her grandmother in Barrow, Alaska; a Navajo gang member who must find his core values in his reservation on the mesas of New Mexico; and a Quechua healer in Peru, attempting to save a sick child. Each story explores what it means to belong to a specific community. A Thousand Roads is a fictional work, produced by National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) to explore the human context of the NMAI’s collections. The film is striking visually, and presents through its beauty and its stories an imaginative entry into knowing about Native people living in the vast indigenous geography that comprises the Americas. Rather than presenting a conventional historical perspective, the film is composed of short contemporary fictions about individuals, grounding them in emotional truths to which an audience can easily relate.
Johnny Chee's Girlfriend
Dawn
A drama about explorer John Smith and the clash between Native Americans and English settlers in the 17th century.
In pre-Revolutionary America, the efforts of a Colonial officer trying to broker a peace deal between Indian chief Pontiac and British and American settlers are threatened by the commander of a Hessian mercenary unit who embarks on a campaign of extermination against the Indians.
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs, to join her. The unlikely pair and the three women head east, where a waiting minister and his wife have offered to take the women in. But the group first must traverse the harsh Nebraska Territories marked by stark beauty, psychological peril and constant threat.
A haunting short version of Edgar Allan Poe's famous story about a cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on a victim of the Spanish Inquisition...
Patagonia, Argentina, 1880s. During the Conquest of the Desert, Marguerite, the French wife of Colonel Garay, in charge of protecting a new railway, discovers that a French woman is being held captive by the local natives.
A driven candidate moments before the most important point of his career. A desperate thug moments before the most dangerous decision of his life. An abstract and compelling short film about finding peace in regret.
In 1825, English peer Lord John Morgan is cast adrift in the American West. Captured by Sioux Indians, Morgan is at first targeted for quick extinction, but the tribesmen sense that he is worthy of survival. He eventually passes the many necessary tests that will permit him to become a member of the tribe.
The old lighthouse keeper lives peacefully with his two daughters, who are both engaged to fisherman. One night he receives a message announcing the shipwreck...
It is love at first sight when Armand Duval meets the courtisan Marguerite. They move in together and live happily until Armands father secretly pays Marguerite a visit to tell her that her questionable reputation has put Armand's entire family in disrepute. She sacrifices herself and leaves Armand, who – in the belief that she left of her own free will – embitters by grief and anger. But destiny wants them to meet again. (stumfilm.dk)
Based on the Helen Hunt Jackson novel of 1884 about a young woman of partial Native American descent, who experiences love and loss in 1800s California.
A young man, who feels constrained living with his father takes drastic measures to liberate himself.
The story of an improbable friendship and a social comment on life in Bolivia in the eighties.
In the 1820s, a frontiersman, Hugh Glass, sets out on a path of vengeance against those who left him for dead after a bear mauling.
Black Cloud, is an inspirational story about a young Navajo, Native American boxer, who overcomes personal challenges as he comes to terms with his heritage, while fighting his way for a spot on the US Olympic boxing team.
Bret Maverick is a gambler who would rather con someone than fight them, and needs an additional $3k in order to enter a winner-takes-all poker game beginning in a few days. He joins forces with a woman with a marvelous Southern accent, and the two try and enter the game.
A down-on-his-luck American Indian recently released from jail is offered the chance to "star" as the victim of a snuff film, the resulting pay of which could greatly help his poverty stricken family.
Farsighted Falcon, chief of the Lakota, seeks refuge in the Black Hills with his wife Blue Hair and two warriors, sole survivors of their tribe. When they are attacked by the outlaw Bashan, Falcon strikes out for the town of Tanglewood to take on Bashan's boss, mining magnate Harrington.
The neighbors of a frontier family turn on them when it is suspected that their beloved adopted daughter was stolen from the Kiowa tribe.
Yellowtail is the story of a young Native American cowboy searching for meaning as his chaotic lifestyle begins to wear on him both physically and mentally. To find his purpose the young man has to reflect on his upbringing as a native to become the spiritually connect man he was meant to be.