'Homeland' Wins Two Awards at Santa Barbara International Film Festival

'Homeland' Wins Two Awards at Santa Barbara International Film Festival

Film Takes Home Social Justice and Audience Awards

LOS ANGELES, Feb. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- A feature-length documentary telling the story of some of the most grievous but little-known environmental and human rights violations in America today, "Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action" has won The Fund for Santa Barbara Social Justice Award for Documentary Film at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and The Audience Award for Documentary Film. "Homeland," produced by Katahdin Productions, uncovers the reality of life on Indian lands across America: children playing near radioactive waste, tribes forced to fish in poisoned rivers, and reservations hemmed in on all sides by strip mines and factories whose smokestacks spew noxious fumes.

"Homeland" tells this story through the eyes of five activists, presenting dramatically different first-person narratives set against the backdrop of some of the country's most spectacular landscapes. Gail Small, an attorney from the Northern Cheyenne nation, is leading the fight to protect the Cheyenne homeland from 75,000 proposed methane gas wells that threaten to make much of the reservation unsuitable for farming or ranching. Evon Peter is the former chief of an isolated Alaska community of Gwich'in people, who are working against current efforts to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Mitchell and Rita Capitan founded an organization of Eastern Navajo people whose only source of drinking water is threatened by proposed uranium mining. And Barry Dana, the former chief of the Penobscot Nation in Maine, is battling state government and the paper companies that have left his people unable to fish or swim in or harvest medicinal plants from the river on which they've depended for 10,000 years.

The film is aiming for PBS broadcast in November, 2005, accompanied by an extensive outreach campaign that will include collaborations with a network of Native American organizations, social justice and human rights groups, and environmental organizations.

"Homeland" was shot on film by cinematographer, Dyanna Taylor; directed by veteran documentary filmmaker, Roberta Grossman, executive produced by Lisa B. Thomas and produced by Katahdin Productions. Composer Todd Boekelheide created the music for the film.


Source: Katahdin Productions

CONTACT: Jane Ayer, jane@janeayerpr.com, or Irene Dean, both of Jane
Ayer Public Relations, +1-310-581-1330, for Katahdin Productions

Web site: http://www.janeayerpr.com/


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