LOS NGELES.- Lily Gladstone knows the severity of what she calls the people epidemic indigenous missing and murdered. But he also values humor in telling those stories. In the film Fancy Dance (Fancy Dance: Una danza ceremonial), which will be released in select theaters in the country on June 21 and reach the service of streaming Apple TV+ on June 28, including Latin America, Gladstone plays Jax, who has cared for his niece, Roki, since her sister disappeared on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. As the pair search for her relative and prepare for Roki’s upcoming powwow, they share moments of unexpected levity in the emotional story.
You would be hard-pressed to find an Indigenous person in North America today who is not touched by an element of this history in a very personal way, Gladstone said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. We all know a missing and murdered indigenous person. It’s something we all collectively regret and work to fix by sticking together and surviving by being funny, finding humor in it.
Isabel Deroy-Olson, who makes her film debut with the film and plays Roki, expressed that the film’s humor helps the audience overcome the heaviest moments in history, which also applied to the actresses.
“Because all of us have a pretty similar sense of humor, we also brought it behind the camera, as a way to encourage each other, and that’s very true in all of our communities,” he said. We like to laugh with each other. Showing that both on and off screen was very important to us.
You have to stay happy, you have to stay laughing and you have to stay optimistic to survive an ongoing genocide, said director and co-writer Erica Tremblay.
A film to inspire change
Named after Jacqueline Jax Agtuca, who works for the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Gladstone’s character becomes frustrated with the lack of attention or care that authorities are putting into her sister’s case and turns to her community for help. help in the search. Gladstone said amplifying this type of story on screen without it being shoved down anyone’s throat can inspire change.
By being and embodying a character, a person who is going through the steps of doing that job, you are inviting the audience into that perspective, into that world where they can learn about the jurisdictional gaps and inequalities in society that create the obstacles. for the characters, he said.
You learn about that obstacle in a way that you have the desire to change it, rather than just hearing about it in a PowerPoint presentation or as a talking point in a news segment that you’ll quickly pass over because you’re more interested in what the score was. for your team, Gladstone continued.
4,200 cases of missing and murdered people throughout the country
While films and shows have addressed the issue of missing indigenous peoples before, they have often been criticized for falling short of accurately and respectfully representing the issue or for failing to reach a broad audience. Taylor Sheridan, co-creator of the Paramount hit Yellowstone, wrote and directed one of the few widely distributed films on the subject, Wind River of 2017.
ABC’s 2022 drama Alaska Daily It also explored violence against indigenous women and the lack of attention given to their cases, but was canceled after one season. ABC had previously aired Big Skya drama set in Montana that premieres in 2020 and received criticism for focusing on white victims rather than Indigenous women, who make up the majority of the state’s missing and murdered population.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimates that there are approximately 4,200 missing and murdered cases nationwide that have not been resolved.
Fancy Dance It focuses on the lack of institutional support and jurisdictional problems that make it difficult to resolve cases of missing indigenous people. In another change from its predecessors, Fancy Dance does not show any violence against women on screen, an approach that is often considered exploitative.
The film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2023 and, despite critical acclaim, was not picked up by a distributor until more than a year later. Tremblay said the film crew didn’t see the offers they expected, but noted that his arrival at Apple’s streaming service is his dream ending.
The linchpin of the entire plan to bring this film to the world was Lily’s continued advocacy for the film and the beautiful moment that she and the entire indigenous cast and crew of Killers of the Flower Moon) had last year, Tremblay said. Lily used some of that glow to aim at Fancy Dance, I think it was fundamental for us and we are very grateful to be where we are.
FUENTE: AP
