Due to original recording and/or condition when digitized: spots and veritcal lines throughout faded color.
Title
Colliding Worlds
Date Created
Circa 1980
Date Published
1980
Description
The film documents the "People Who Live Where the Cedar Trees Start to Grow" (Wah-up-weh-tuhneum), also known as the Mono or Western Monache people, and their attempts to maintain cultural traditions such as acorn collecting, food preparation, music, dance, powwows, and games. Filmmaker Orie Medicinebull was the first woman of the Mono tribe to earn an MFA in Motion Pictures and Television Production from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in Motion Pictures and Television Production, and the first Native American woman to make a film about the Native American people of California.
Four generations of women from Orie’s own family are featured in the film: her grandmother, mother, sister, and sister's children. Mono language, music, and tradition are shown throughout the film, highlighting the celebrations and difficulties of surviving and multigenerational conflict. This documentary includes shots and discussion of acorn collecting, food preparation, music, and dance, as well as shots of the Mono Hand Game Team playing Hand Game, a popular gambling game. At the 1980 American Indian Film Festival at the Palace of Fine Arts, she received an award for Best Documentary for Colliding Worlds. This film includes the Bass Lake Ranger District, located in the Sierra National Forest and North Fork Mono Tribal members in Eastern Madera County. The filmmaker received a production grant from The American Film Institute in association with The National Endowment for the Arts.
Orie was a part of the L.A. Rebellion film movement at UCLA. Colliding Worlds was Orie’s first film as the primary filmmaker. She has made distinguished contributions to Native American cultural understanding through the medium of film, has had a partnership with Sierra Mono Museum, participated in the initial development of Mono language project at UCLA, developed media packages for projects of Indian Centers, Inc. of Los Angeles, and has skills in Native American health care delivery, including traditional medicine and family crisis programs. She has continued practicing her expertise in educational equity, family planning, non-traditional job training, and women's health advocacy by organizing and developing community programming around filmmaking, the arts, powwows, conferences for women and youth, and general community health.
Research: Bernice C. LeNoir, Paula Starr, Harold White.
Linguistic consultants: Rosalie Bethel and Lorraine Bishop.
Copyrighted. Rights are owned by Orie Medicinebull. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the Copyright Holder. In addition, the reproduction of some materials may be restricted by terms of gift or purchase agreements, donor restrictions, privacy and publicity rights, licensing and trademarks. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.