Overwhelming response to film draws encore
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RONAN – In the past year Ken White has received positive feedback from audiences in major cities across the globe for his film adaptation of James Welch’s novel “Winter in the Blood,” but he was thrilled to see an overflowing turnout when the film was shown at the Entertainer theater in Ronan on Saturday.
“We’ve shown this film in Paris,” White said. “We’ve shown it in Peru. We’ve shown it in L.A. and New York, and it is never better than when we show it where it was set and show it where the people helped us make it. It’s good to shoot it at home and show it at home.”
The Flathead Reservation Human Rights Coalition sponsored a free showing of the film as the grand finale of a four-part weekend film series that ran throughout October and featured Native American-themed content. Turnout was so high for the film that the Entertainer gave an unplanned encore performance for the throes of people left waiting in line outside its doors when the initial showing started. Every one of the theater’s 140 seats were taken for the first showing. Another 100 seats were full for the encore.
White said he loved having a full house and hearing feedback from the native community.
“I’ve had people stop me on the street and say ‘That is the best rendition of my life, or my uncle’s life, or my father’s life that I have ever seen,’” White said. “I thank you for telling the truth. I’ve also had people tell me ‘That was the most negative thing I’ve ever seen, and I can’t believe you made that.’ It definitely touches a nerve.”
The film doesn’t shy away from some tough subject matter that touches the Flathead Reservation every day. The story’s plot includes blatant displays of alcoholism, domestic violence, and suicidal behavior that are fueled by tragedy experienced by the Blackfeet male protagonist on both an individual and cultural level.
“It’s not a conventional western-type film in terms of investors,” White said. “We had to work hard to get support for the film, particularly with the subject matter, and doing justice by the novel. It’s an intense novel.”
The film was created in Montana and White said he and the producers enjoyed getting to know native families who lived on Montana’s Hi-Line.
“The abandoned Mission on the hill where he’s got the rifle over his shoulder (is in Chinook),” White said. “The beautiful thing is that a lot of the people, the characters in the book, are buried in that cemetery.”
The response in the state has been good, he said, although audiences elsewhere in America aren’t as receptive.
“The French and the Germans, the other countries loved it,” White said. “Other countries loved it more than other places in the United States, other places that aren’t as diverse. Indians in Indian Country is imaginary people for them, which is particularly strange to me. But the French, they loved it.”
The movie premiered at the Los Angeles film festival in 2013. Later that year it was shown in the Austin Film Festival and American Indian Film Festival. The distribution rights to the film were optioned this summer, which means it will be available for purchase in early 2015. It will also be available via Netflix, Hulu, and other mediums.
White has moved onto another project that will likely hit even closer to home. He has written and is slated to direct an adaptation of Debra Magpie Earling’s novel Perma Red, which details the experiences of a native woman on the Flathead Reservation in the early 1940s.
Until then, the Flathead Reservation Human Rights Coalition will continue to foster conversations like the one sparked by Winter in Blood.
“We’re trying to send a message that dialogue is good,” coalition secretary/treasurer Cathy Billie said. “Community spirit is good. We all live here together. That’s the important thing. That’s what our group is all about. We want dialogue.”
Coalition vice president Tracy Morigeau Frank called the turnout for the film “simply amazing.”
She said suggestions for next year’s film series can be made on the organization’s Facebook page.
