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“THE ONLY GOOD INDIAN” director-producer, Kevin Willmott
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Friday, Jan. 16, 5:30 pm — Holiday Village Cinema III, Park City]
We made a conscious effort to fight against the issues of Internet and nonarthouse distribution. All those avenues are exciting and interesting in many ways, however, no one seems to be writing any checks for them. I still believe that most filmmakers make a film to be shown in a theater.
We felt our story was cinematic in scale and because of the importance of the history involved, we needed to try to reach as large an audience as possible. I still think that is through arthouse cinemas.
You make a film to be acknowledged and for it to have an affect on the culture as a whole. I think there is coming a time when the Internet and other sources may do that, but I have not seen it yet.
We were trying to respond to a cinematic history involving Native Americans that has been discriminatory in countless ways. We tried to compete with films that created the stereotypes and negative images of Native Americans and felt that The Only Good Indian needed to be on the same cinematic level as those films.
Those realities are what shaped our decision to shoot on 35mm. There is a richness and warmth in those legendary films that we were trying to connect with.
Some of the greatest films in our history have issued these negative images. It seemed very important to respond with the same cinematic integrity. In essence, we are trying to reclaim those negative images, take ownership of them and allow people to reconstruct images that take back this history.
