Rod Pocowatchit is the mind behind Wichita’s newest film festival, AlterNative. Pocowatchit is a filmmaker and Native American who wants to share his enthusiasm for movies with Wichita. And he wants audiences to see Native Americans represented in film. For this month’s ArtWorks, Pocowatchit talked with Torin Andersen about the upcoming event.
“I've been making films now for about 20 years. And I've traveled to film festivals, you know, around the world. And there are a lot of Native festivals out there, but a lot of people don't know about them. And I thought it was a no-brainer for Wichita to have one.”
“So I approached the Indian Center with the idea, and they loved it, and thanked me for coming to them with it. And then COVID happened. So we had to postpone it. And then we had the first one and 2021. It was a pretty, pretty nice success.”
“For the first year, I wanted to curate it just with films from my travels, filmmakers I had met over the years, I wanted to curate it with some of my favorite films from festivals that I've been to, that I think need to be seen.”
“And this year we opened it up to submissions. We’re bringing in someone from Reservation Dogs, the Hulu series. So I’m super excited about that.”
“What's really cool about festivals like this is it's showing films that people might not ordinarily get to see or have access to. One of the documentaries that we’re showing this year is called, We Will Speak. And it’s about people in the Cherokee tribe working to preserve their language.”
“My opening night film and my closing night film are both by Native women directors. You know, one of them opened at the Toronto Film Festival. One of them premiered this year at the Sundance Film Festival. And so we’re getting those films, like directly from that.”
“The first night on Friday, November 10, we have an opening reception. We're having it catered with food and wine. That's at 6 p.m. And then the film is at 7:15 p.m. And that film is called Beans. And it's really rooted in an actual incident that happened when she was young. When Mohawks were being basically evicted from their land, they had to go across city boundaries. And as they were, people were throwing rocks at them. That's sort of the backdrop of this young girl's experiences, a coming of age film about this young girl that has to live through that.”
“And then Saturday, the film's start at 2 p.m. And then that night at 6:30, we'll have a reception here at the Indian Center with our special guests, Natalie Standing Cloud from Reservation Dogs. And then at 7:15. We're going to show two episodes that she's in.”
“And then Sunday afternoon at 2 is a shorts program. And then after that I'm having a 20th anniversary screening of the very first feature film I made called Dancing On The Moon. That's going to be at 3:30. And then the closing night film is at 6:15. That's the one that premiered at Sundance, and it's called Fancy Dance. And again, it's another coming of age story.”
“I want to show a lot of films that people might not ordinarily see but also might not ordinarily see a Native person in. My goal is to get more natives represented in mass pop culture. So hopefully I'm helping that cause.”
