The Exiles

Filmed in Los Angeles’s now-demolished neighborhood of Bunker Hill, Ken MacKenzie’s docudrama follows a lively night in the life of a group of young Native Americans adjusting to life in the big city in the late 50s, exploring their hopes, dreams, and heartaches. After its premiere at the 1961 Venice Film Festival, it fell into obscurity until its 2008 restoration by Milestone Films. The Exiles has since been reappraised as one of the best Los Angeles films of all time, a document of the city’s vanished past, and an essential and rare portrait of Native Americans in the era of their urban relocation.

Preceded by

Sunflower Siege Engine (2023)
Dir. Sky Hopinka
13min, Digital

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga) crafts a rich meditation on moments of Indigenous resistance, from the reclamation of the Cahokia Mounds to the 1969—71 occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Tribes activist group, woven by moments of personal reflection on existence in the world today.