Pembroke, NC- The 6th annual Lumbee Film Festival is returning to Pembroke, North Carolina, with 19 original films directed by Indigenous filmmakers and festival alumni. This year’s festival takes place July 5 & 6 during the 2024 Lumbee Homecoming at the University of North Carolina Pembroke. Festivities kick off Friday night at 7:30 p.m. at James A. Thomas Hall with the premiere of the highly-anticipated, locally-made narrative short, Lumbeeland. Due to high demand, a second screening has been added to the festival lineup, screening again on Saturday, July 6 at 1 p.m.
Lumbeeland is the first film written by, produced by, and starring members of the Lumbee tribe, headed by award-winning scholar and filmmaker Malinda Maynor Lowery. After Lowery and director Montana Cypress met at the 2022 Lumbee Film Festival, the pair decided to create a film to shed light on a dark and persistent struggle that plagues the community many Lumbees call home: the drug trade. Lumbeeland is co-produced by Honey Head Films of Wilmington, NC, an award-winning, full-service, female-led production house with a mission-driven approach to narrative filmmaking.
Festival director Kim Pevia says, “One of the purposes of the Lumbee Film Festival is to provide representation of Indigenous films. It’s exciting to have one filmed locally, telling one of the stories of Lumbee Country, written and produced by our own Malinda Maynor Lowery and starring Lumbee actors such as Harvey Godwin, Billy Oxendine, and Antoinette Locklear and others in the film and production. Apparently I am not the only one excited–we had to add another showing to the lineup. It is a wonderful feeling to see Indigenous folks–geniuses in their craft–and it is especially gratifying to see that happen here in Lumbee Country.”
Documentary shorts block “Learning from the Land” screens Saturday afternoon starting at 3 p.m., featuring a collection of short films about Mother Earth, the transformative power of art, and the exploration of generational connection in Katsitsionni Fox’s Tentsitewahkwe. At 5 p.m., the second shorts block starts with Know to Run, featuring Indigenous runner, artist and advocate Yatika Starr Fields. Then take a journey into the life of Native American hockey legend Henry Boucha in Electric Indian.
This year’s festival concludes with another jam-packed shorts block starting at 7 p.m. with What They’ve Been Taught, an exploration of the Cherokee language and tradition. Follow a class of middle school students as they explore the Rio Grande, a drought in New Mexico, and farming in the desert by early Pueblo peoples in the award-winning short film Water, Star Medicine.
The Lumbee Film Festival is a partnership between the Lumbee Tribe of NC and the Cucalorus Film Foundation, and is sponsored by the North Carolina Arts Council.
Lumbee Film Festival screenings are free and open to the public, taking place in James A. Thomas Hall on the campus of the University of North Carolina Pembroke. For the full festival schedule, visit lumbeefilmfestival.eventive.org.
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