Where Condor Meets Eagle: Indigenous Bolivian and Native American Film Fest

The Augsburg Native American Film Series and Phillips Indian Educators are proud to collaborate on and present Where Condor Meets Eagle: Indigenous Bolivian and Native American Film Festival and Cultural Exchange, a four-day cultural exchange and three-night film festival celebrating Indigenous film, inter-cultural exchange, and visual storytelling. Your donations will help ensure we achieve our goals. All donations are tax deductible and will be handled through our fiscal agent: Augsburg College.

The festival title, “Where Condor Meets Eagle,” reflects the prophecy that when the Condor (South America) meets the Eagle (North America) the Indigenous continent will be healed. This title also represents our philosophy—to promote good health/living well for Indigenous communities through decolonization and self-determination.

History of the Project: Where Condor Meets Eagle grew out of a cultural exchange between 12 local educators, artists and community members who traveled to Bolivia to meet with Indigenous leaders working with Evo Morales, the only Indigenous president in the Western hemisphere. An agreement emerged out of this meeting between the Vice Ministry of Decolonization in Bolivia and the Phillips Indian Educators of Minneapolis to work together over the next three years on Indigenous health and wellness, culture, education, and climate change initiatives. In this spirit, Where Condor Meets Eagle is dedicated to providing educational, multicultural, and cultural empowerment for Native people through an Indigenous film, art, and cultural exchange.

Project Goals:

• to provide local audiences with free access to quality Indigenous films from Bolivia, Canada, and Minnesota, and to their local, national, and international filmmakers;
• to educate through film about Native American and Indigenous Bolivian cultures, traditional worldviews, and contemporary issues;
• and to facilitate media literacy through film and dialogue with filmmakers;
• to promote mentoring across cultures and ages for Indigenous filmmakers;
• to share cultural knowledge across international boundaries through hospitality and cultural engagement.

Film Festival Information:

Dates: March 16-18, 2012

Location: Parkway Cinema, 4814 Chicago Ave. Minneapolis, MN 55407 (612-822-3030).

Informational Web Site: Complete screening information including dates, moderators, and times will be up on the Augsburg Native American Film Series web site by Dec. 1, 2011: www.augsburg.edu/filmseries.

The Where Condor Meets Eagle Film Festival includes documentaries, docudramas, and narrative fiction films representing the work produced by three Indigenous film organization—Igloolik Isuma Productions (Canada), CAIB (Bolivia) and Mushkeg Media Inc. (Canada)—whose award winning work has been recognized globally at festivals including, the Native American Film + Video Festival (New York), Cannes, Toronto Film Festival, and the American Indigenous People and First Nations Film and Video Festival (Bolivia). The event also will include short films produced in the Summer 2011 by two award winning local youth-producer groups from Minnesota: MIGIZI Youth Producers and Project Reserve Youth Producers.

Many of the filmmakers will be present at the screenings to answer your questions and participate in discussions about their films, Indigenous culture, traditional worldviews, and contemporary issues facing Indigenous people. Translators will be present at each event.

The Where Condor Meets Eagle: Indigenous Bolivian and Native American Film Festival and Cultural Exchange is generously supported through grants from the following organizations:

• Charles and Mabel Williams Fund of the Minneapolis Foundation
• Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, This activity is made possible, in part, by funds provided by the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council from an appropriation by the Minnesota Legislature.

For a full list of supporters please visit www.augsburg.edu/filmseries