Indigenous Peoples in Film

Right from the first sentence, film scholar Thomas Koebner states in his book "Indians in front of the Camera": "Indians in front of the camera: that means capturing images of a culture that, after the whites encountered it, had to learn that it was in the way". Only gradually did the realisation take hold that a genocide, a genocide had been constitutive for the building of the USA. Much has happened in the meantime; the (self-)critical confrontation with the "First Nations", the indigenous natives, has changed consciousness in many respects, also in dealing with cinematic images. And yet far too few people still think about the origin and culture of "Indians". The real lives of indigenous peoples are rarely the subject of films, and it is correspondingly difficult to overcome prejudices against cultures - be they good or bad. The films in our collection respectfully describe indigenous societies and in doing so refer in many ways to the painful history of colonialism and its continuing effects.