“Navajo Talking Picture” (1985, Arlene Bowman)

In Navajo Talking Picture (Arlene Bowman, 1986, 40 minutes), film student Arlene Bowman (Navajo) travels to the Reservation to document the traditional ways of her grandmother. The filmmaker persists in spite of her grandmother’s forceful objections to this invasion of her privacy. Ultimately, what emerges is a thought-provoking work which abruptly calls into question issues of “insider/outsider” status in a portrait of an assimilated Navajo struggling to use a “white man’s” medium to capture the remnants of her cultural past. Excellent for film studies as well as those interested in Native American culture.

— Discussion to follow with Prof. Orin Starn (Cultural Anthropology).

This film complements Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now. This film series is co-sponsored by the Nasher Museum and the Program in the Arts of the Moving Image at Duke.

“Bowman herself emerges as a sympathetic character from an absurdist comedy as both her ancestry and film goals elude her.”
—Steven Mikulan, Los Angeles Weekly

“Unsparingly honest.” —Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times