STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
The Hailey Public Library will celebrate Native American Heritage Month this week with a free screening of a movie filmed in part at the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation.
The award-winning coming-of-age comedy-drama will be shown at 6 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 21, at Hailey Town Center West, 116 S. River St. Popcorn will be served.
The library cannot divulge the name of the movie, but it has chosen to advertise the screening in modern fashion rather than through smoke signals.
The screenplay was written by Sherman Alexie, an award-winning Couer d’Alene/Spokane novelist and filmmaker now living in Seattle. Alexis has spoken at The Community Library.
The film that will be shown Thursday is the first feature-length film written, directed and produced by Native Americans.
The film, known for its off-the-wall humor, follows a hot-tempered basketball player named Victor and his friend Thomas Builds-the-Fire, both of whom grew up on the Coeur d’Alene Reservation near Plummer, as they go on a road trip to receive the ashes of Victor’s father. It offers a chance for them to explore their different versions of Indian identities, even as they try to understand their different approaches to Victor’s father.
Victor both loves and resents his father because of his alcoholism and eventual child abandonment. Thomas regards him as a hero for rescuing him from a house fire that killed his parents.
The film won the Sundance Grand Jury prize and Audience Award in 1998 and was selected by the Library of Congress for the National Film Registry as being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
Based on Alexie’s short story collection “The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven,” it’s being shown as part of the library’s Idaho in the Movies series.
“This fun and quirky series has been fun to put together,” said Kristin Fletcher, the library’s programs manager. “It features some tried and true classics, a couple of grand old westerns, a fun kid’s animation about two wolf pups lost in the Idaho wilds and more. Each film features Idaho in some way.
“Looking ahead, December’s offering is a rollicking, 1950s musical. A woman in love with her playboy boss follows him to a ski resort where water spectacles and midnight ski carnivals happen in the splendor of Sun Valley.”