Celebrating Women Filmmakers
Friday, April 29 | 5:30 pm
Saturday, April 30 | 5:30 pm
Sunday, May 1 | 2 pm
Thursday, May 5 | 5:30 pm
Premiering at Sundance last year, Songs My Brothers Taught Me was shot and primarily cast on location—on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation—with most of the film’s actors coming from the Lakota tribe. The film stars non-professionals John Reddy as teenager Johnny Winters, and JaShaun St. John as his sweet, eleven-year-old sister, Jashaun. Johnny and Jashaun respectively sell bootlegged liquor and homemade apparel from a heavily tattooed ex-con, when not attending classes at local schools or getting into trouble at underground parties. When Jashaun discovers Johnny’s plan to leave for L.A. with his girlfriend (Taysha Fuller), she’s forced to confront her future alone with their alcoholic (if still well-meaning) mother. Songs My Brothers Taught Me juxtaposes the extreme poverty of the modern Lakota people with the breathtaking beauty of the film’s Badlands setting. First-time filmmaker Chloé Zhao brings great compassion to a work that possesses “strong notes of hope and of bone-deep identity,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Director Chloé Zhao 2015 United States 94 minutes NR DCP
