For Immediate Release                                                   December 29 , 2016
January Films -  40 Years. 40 Films. 40 Weeks.

Vision Maker Media continues its 40th anniversary celebration with five films streaming in January as part of its collection of 40 films available for free streaming through Aug. 7, 2017. 

Each week a different film will be available: 

Titles for December: 
Jan. 3 .................... Games of the North
Jan. 10 .................. Weaving Worlds
Jan. 17 .................. Indian Country Diaries: A Seat at the Drum 
Jan. 24 .................. Indian Country Diaries: Spiral of Fire
Jan. 31 .................. The Return of Navajo Boy

For thousands of years, traditional Inuit sports have been vital for survival within the unforgiving Arctic. These ancestral games evolved to strengthen mind, body and spirit within the community. This film follows four modern Inuit athletes as they reveal their unique relationship to the games and compete across the North. As unprecedented change sweeps across their traditional lands and their stories illuminate the importance of the games today.  Producer:  Steven Wounded Deer Alvarez

In this film, Navajo filmmaker Bennie Klain takes viewers into the world of contemporary Navajo weavers and their struggles for self-sufficiency. Highlighting untold stories and colorful characters involved in the making and selling of Navajo rugs, Weaving Worlds explores the lives of Navajo artisans and their unique relationship with Reservation traders. The film artfully relates the Navajo concepts of kinship and reciprocity with the human and cultural connections to sheep, wool, water and the land, showing how indigenous artisans strive for cultural vitality and environmental sustainability in the face of globalization by "reweaving the world."  Producer: Leighton C. Peterson

In A Seat at the Drum, journalist Mark Anthony Rolo (Bad River Ojibwe) journeys to L.A., the city that filled his imagination as a child. There, he meets many of the thousands of American Indian families who were relocated from poor reservations to the cities in the last half of the 20th century, creating the largest Native American community in the nation, over 200,000 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.  Producers: Frank Blythe  and Carol Patton Cornsilk

This documentary explores the challenges faced by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians on their reservation in North Carolina. Through the eyes of Choctaw writer LeAnne Howe, we see how their fusion of tourism, cultural preservation, and spirituality is working to insure their tribe's vitality in the 21st century.  Producers: Frank Blythe and Carol Patton Cornsilk

THE RETURN OF NAVAJO BOY
An official selection of the Sundance Film Festival and PBS, this film is an internationally acclaimed documentary that reunited a Navajo family and triggered a federal investigation into uranium contamination. It tells the story of Elsie Mae Begay, whose history in pictures reveals an incredible and ongoing struggle for environmental justice. A powerful new epilogue (produced in 2008) shows how the film and Groundswell Educational Films' outreach campaign create news and rally supporters.
Producers: Bennie Klain and Jeff Spitz

About 40 Years. 40 Films. 40 Weeks. 
The same year our nation celebrated its bicentennial and President Ford proclaimed a week in October as "Native American Awareness Week",  six Native producers in public television met to charter the Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium (NAPBC), later known as Native American Public Telecommunications (NAPT) and now Vision Maker Media.

In these 40 years, our organization has created more than 500 films, awarded $11 million to independent producers and held hundreds of film-screening events across the nation. In celebration of Vision Maker Media's 40th anniversary, a collection of 40 films will be available for free streaming through Aug. 7, 2017. Each week a different film will be available on  visionmakermedia.org   and  americanarchive.org .

About Vision Maker Media
Vision Maker Media is celebrating 40 years as your premier source for quality American Indian and Alaska Native educational and home videos. All aspects of our programs encourage the involvement of young people to learn more about careers in the media--to be the next generation of storytellers. Vision Maker Media envisions a world changed and healed by understanding Native stories and the public conversations they generate. 

With funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Vision Maker Media's Public Media Content Fund awards support to projects with a Native American theme and significant Native involvement that ultimately benefits the entire public media community. Vision Maker Media, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) empowers and engages Native People to tell stories. For more information,  www.visionmakermedia.org


About The American Archive of Public Broadcasting
The American Archive of Public Broadcasting seeks to preserve and make accessible significant historical content created by public media, and to coordinate a national effort to save at-risk public media before its content is lost to posterity.