Native Features

This book has the unenviable job of finding a practical way to organize a very fractious and fluid area of film study. Indigenous films (especially fictional features) represent cultures that have as many important commonalities as they do differences. Add to this the fact that feature films are enormous, collaborative efforts, and so almost every indigenous film interacts with non-indigenous production elements, and you have barely-navigable intellectual terrain. Nevermind the fact that film itself is often viewed as an inherently western medium, a philosophy that Wood succinctly (and rightly) dismisses in the book. Wood addresses these issues of reductionism at the outset of his book, and his answers to the questions they pose are so practical and useful that I'd suggest they are the 'right' answers for the time being, and worth adopting in related discourse. Right in the sense that, for the moment, they're probably the best we can do. He suggests, for instance, that whether or not a film merits discussion as an 'indigenous' feature should be something ultimately determined not by the film's production hierarchy but by the community it attempts to represent: do members of that community feel it's a film they can embrace on its merits? It's a highly appopriate ideology of self-determination, and one that allows a potentially fruitful discourse to skirt one of the fairly flimsy obstacles that often inhibits its progress. To put it very broadly, the book is an exploration of: 1. An existing body of work: 'indigenous' feature films. 2. The state of that body of work and what that reveals to us. 3. The critical issues important to digesting or discussing that body of work. In moving through these areas of interest, the book does an excellent job of describing (not ruining)the films for the reader (who may not have seen many of them). It does so by moving through them regionally, an approach that makes a lot of sense given the films' often geocultural themes. While the book may find its most detailed critical analysis in mostly well-known features, it certainly does not neglect less watched gems like 'Mile Post 398' or 'Edge of America.' This book will be informative for the uneducated reader and will still be of interest to the film or indigenous studies scholar, which is part of what makes it so wonderful. It accomplishes this in large part thanks to its exhaustive, global approach, but doesn't suffer the potential shortfalls that a pan-indigenous methodology would present because it is so thoughtfully organized. Less interesting but equally important is the polish and simplicity of Wood's writing. The book is an easy cover-to-cover read and includes an index of the mentioned films in the back so that you can cruise through it without having to scribble notes about them on a piece of paper. It's often hard to find resources about indigenous film that approach the subject matter in a way that's not overly academic or sentimental. Without bein

Libraries strong in international film and culture need Houstin Wood's NATIVE FEATURES: INDIGENOUS FILMS FROM AROUND THE WORLD, the first book to examine films made by indigenous people. It analyzes over fifty such films now in circulation, considering cultural stereotypes, and impact of both well-known and seldom-seen films, and considering the careers of major actors and directors. Both a regional and world-wide approach allows for an outstanding series of perspectives.