“Remember Fort Pillow,” a documentary film produced in collaboration with Rhodes students, is an official selection of the Indie Memphis Film Festival 2016. Rated one of the top 25 film festivals in the nation, Indie Memphis is known for bringing together the work of filmmakers who work outside the L.A. industry. “Fort Pillow” explores a racial atrocity that took place during the Civil War, and how the massacre has been treated in public memory. Rhodes students researched the incident within a history department seminar and crafted the film based on archival evidence, site investigations, and interviews with scholars. Indie Memphis will feature “Remember Fort Pillow” at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 6 at Circuit Playhouse, 51 Cooper Ave.
Another film produced and directed by Garceau, “We Sing,” will screen at Indie Memphis this year as well. “We Sing” explores gender and powwow cultures through the lens of tribal elders and youth among the Blackfeet, Pend’Oreille, Gros-Ventre, Chippewa-Cree, and northern Arapaho people. Early photographers such as Edward S. Curtis created a mythic view of Native Americans as vanishing cultures, unsuited to modern life. What Curtis missed, according to Garceau, were the many ways Indian people met change with integrity and imagination—adapting and remembering, bringing their own tribal values forward in new ways. “Audiences often expect stories of dispossession when they go to a film about indigenous people,” she says, “but this documentary foregrounds stories of innovation and resilience.” It took Garceau six years to make the film, building relationships with dancers and drum singers in Montana and Idaho during summers and sabbaticals. “We Sing” will screen at Circuit Playhouse on Sunday, Nov. 6 at 3 p.m.
For more information about Indie Memphis, visit here.