Talom Aptzai Native American Film Festival

With the intention of re-adjusting mindsets, and honoring accurate, sensitive and thought-provoking films, American Indians in Texas, as part of its 25th year in the Alamo City, is hosting a FREE Native American Film Festival. The Talom Aptzai Film Festival will take place Sunday, August 25, 2019 from noon to 9:00 p.m. at the Guadalupe Theatre, 1301 W. Guadalupe St.

Talom Aptzai, meaning “ancient fire” in Pajalate (a Coahuiltecan language), refers to the custom of gathering around the fire to share stories among family. Likewise, the festival is designed to create platforms for discussion through more than six hours of shorts, documentaries and feature films. 

Among the topics explored in the films are cultural appropriation, addictions, gender dysphoria and gender stereotypes, forced family separations, social and health inequities, unjust labor practices and spirituality. 

“The festival was curated to highlight the wide array of voices and types of movies that are part of Native cinema currently,” explained Pewenofkit.  Among the settings for the movies are San Antonio, Alaska, New Mexico, Arizona, Canada and Mexico, but subjects broach shared experiences with cultures as distant as the Irish and Syrians.   

To help generate discussion, the director and producer of one of the films, A Strike and an Uprising (in Texas), will open the floor to questions and answers. The film, which was a very personal one for its associate producer, Laura Varela, and director, Anne Lewis, covers systemic institutional racism. The film is in part, an oral history of the Latino pecan workers in San Antonio, and African-American university employees in Nacogdoches.