Filmmaker Chris Eyre

From St. John’s College:

For years, St. John’s College has opened its doors to lifelong learners.  There are in-person and online seminars throughout the year. The pinnacle of this program is Summer Classics, which takes place on the beautiful Santa Fe campus, as well as online.

For the most part, these classes, which are beloved by all the people who attend every year, deepen attendees’ knowledge of and delight in classic works. 

But the seminars are not confined to the written word, and this year the college is highlighting an examination of Indigenous Cinema, July 20-24, including two films by Santa Fe-based Chris Eyre.

“Indigenous Cinema” (July 20-24) is led by St. John’s David Carl and IAIA Professor in Cinema Studies David Meyer.

For the St. John’s program, Carl and Meyer focus on four movies, two by Chris Eyre (Cheyenne, Arapaho) a third by Swedish/Sami filmmaker Amanda Kernell and finally a movie by Canadian Inuk producer Zacharias Kunuk.

Carl and Meyer, both film buffs, study seminal works from this relatively new tradition of Native American and indigenous filmmaking—a tradition which strives to recapture the image of “the Indian” from traditional Western movies—by focusing these made between 1998 and 2016: Chris Eyre’s Smoke Signals, and his 2002 follow-up film Skins; Amanda Kernell’s Oscar-nominated Sami Blood, from 2016, about an Indigenous Sami woman passing for white in Sweden; and Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, from 2000, which is the sole cinematic depiction of a traditional Indigenous Inuit myth, made by the Indigenous community itself, remaining a central part of its culture.

To enroll visit https://www.sjc.edu/ lifelong-learning/summer- classics/registration.