In this episode, we're chatting with Native Cinema Showcase Program Manager Cindy Benitez and filmmaker and actor Morningstar Angeline about this year's showcase.
In conjunction with the 100th anniversary of the Santa Fe Indian Market, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian presents the annual Native Cinema Showcase, which takes place in Santa Fe from August 18 to 21. Native Cinema Showcase is an official program of the 2022 Santa Fe Indian Market, which is sponsored by the Southwest Association for Indian Arts.
About Morningstar, whose film
Seeds is in the showcase: Born in Santa Fe and raised in Gallup and Los Angeles, Morningstar is a queer Navajo, Chippewa, Blackfeet, Shoshone and Latinx actor and filmmaker. Morningstar was just announced as the
second-ever participant in NBCU's director's initiative and is a 2018 Sundance Indigenous Lab, 2020 Native American Feature Writers Lab and 2021 imagineNATIVE Directors' Lab Fellow and serves on the board of directors for the mixed-media company Tse'Nato'. As an actor, Morningstar recently had recurring roles in
Outer Range and
Westworld.
About Cindy: Cindy lives in NYC and has worked with the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian for the past 12 years. Ten of those years have been with Native Cinema Showcase, of which she said this: "One of my favorite memories at Native Cinema Showcase is not necessarily the films or even the filmmakers. It's the incredible subjects that are in these films."
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