Reel Injun
Reel Injun
| 19 February 2010 (USA)
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The evolution of the depiction of the various Native American peoples in cinema, from the silent era to the present day: how their image on the screen has changed the way to understand their history and culture.

Reviews
Merolliv

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

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Gurlyndrobb

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

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filippaberry84

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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Payno

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

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John Chereson

The movie was very educational and told the truth about how Native Americans have been represented in film throughout history. It was interesting to see how they have been misrepresented, mistreated, generalized, and taken advantage of in films. People have become ignorant regarding the truth about Native Americans because of the image that Hollywood paints for them. Thankfully things are slowly changing and that the true story of Native Americans is starting to be told in Hollywood. The film did leave me wanting to know more toward the end and I feel like it did not come full circle and complete what it started.

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BigLaxFan94

I found this one to be very informative about the all the negative stereotypes that Native people all over Turtle Island used to face a lot through images seen about them on TV and the big screen!! Fortunately, it isn't as bad as it used to be in my opinion since Natives are being viewed as a lot more human. However the damage had already been done ever since motion pictures were invented during the turn of the century and many STILL see Native folks as "savages" who are "noble", "stoic", etc. It's pathetic that EVEN TODAY mainstream society still sees them in such a negative manner! I am personally appalled by the old Hollywood views of Native people and I wish they would just vanish into thin air! But.. ANYWAYS... that's my scoop on this program and why I voted 9 out of 10.

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Turtle Heart

I am an Ojibwe American Indian. In the first place, including Rusell Means in this film proves how absolutely uninformed the film maker really is. Means has been universally discredited as a gangster and killer by the broad American Indian community...there could be no more offensive presence in a film about American Indians. Otherwise the film is a terribly overworked cliché of itself and shows serious problems that are designed to fit the writer's agenda but does not tell an accurate story. There is so little good and correct information available on American Indians that many film-makers, including this one, just make things up. Modern people often feel so guilty and sympathetic, if they feel anything at all, about the American Indian, that a film like this will get good reviews just because it confirms the paranoid tendencies of the new world order. Had the improperly focused writer and film-maker chosen to tell a more positive and honest story, this film could have had some value. As it is, it tells a somewhat true story in such a paranoid and selective way that it, too, has become another part of the problem.

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GeneralYo

I was really looking forward to seeing this documentary. In fairness, it does live up to its promise to expose the "Hollywood Indian" as a fabrication. But seriously, who didn't already know that - at least to some degree? What Reel Injun fails to do is offer any substantial new insight into the reality of Aboriginal cultures. There's so much rich diversity, and yet we learn next to nothing about any particular group. There's a place in the documentary where the point is made that relatively few Americans actually know an Aboriginal person. It's unfortunate that Reel Injun doesn't do much to help in that regard. Maybe I was expecting too much from an 86 minute doc. Hopefully there will be a follow up to Reel Injun that focuses more on who Aboriginal people are, as opposed to what they are not.

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