Fourth Biennial VisionMaker Film Festival Report

The Fourth Biennial VisionMaker Film Festival occurred in Omaha, Lincoln, and Kearney, Nebraska, with events from September 20 to October 6, 2011. This event features films made by and about Native Americans; some are fictional narratives, some are documentaries, and they include shorts as well as feature length films. This year there were more films shown than ever before, most of them at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center at University of Nebraska - Lincoln. They included several screenings of new films that have not been widely released. The festival offers a unique opportunity to celebrate Native American film and to note the ways in which the religious and cultural beliefs of Native Americans play a part in their self-representation and their representation of their past and their future. We hope you enjoy these reviews, and we hope that you will be able to see some of these films in other venues, if you missed them at the festival. Reviews are by Julien Fielding, Dale Stover, William Blizek, Michele Desmarais, and myself. - John C. Lyden, Editor