“We Wanted to Run It Like a Normal Powwow”: Sky Hopinka on Powwow People

Sky Hopinka is one of those rare filmmakers who seems to possess an instinctual artistic eye. And his latest Powwow People is a “vérité-style documentary grounded in the rhythms, relationships, and lived experience of a contemporary Native gathering” according to its spot-on synopsis. It’s also a beautifully-crafted art film refreshingly not specifically made for the cinephile (i.e., East Coast liberal/Euro) gaze. Indeed, in order to avoid the extractive lens Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño people, purposely did not parachute in to capture a powwow “National Geographic” style (as the event’s MC Ruben Littlehead jokes to the camera early on). Instead the MacArthur Fellowship-winning director and his collaborators staged the assembly from scratch themselves. It’s a cinematic project handmade with loving care with and for one’s own community. An experience had from the inside out. Soon after the doc’s Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival premiere (a month after its TIFF debut and before its IDFA premiere), Filmmaker caught up with the visual artist and filmmaker, who was also one of our “25 New Faces 2018.”

To read my interview visit Filmmaker magazine.