The Alaska Native Heritage Center is hosting a film festival and community concert, featuring films from two Alaska Native artists.
Solstice X Sundance is a partnership with the Sundance Institute and takes place Friday at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. It’s free and runs from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. It will be the Alaska debut of film Fancy Dance, a feature-length film co-written by Miciana Alise, a Tlingit & Haida citizen. The event will also feature two short films from Inupiaq and Mexican filmmaker Alexis “Alex” Anoruk Sallee: Building Future Leaders and Alaska Art Alliance.
Fancy Dance is the directorial debut of Erica Tremblay, known for her writing credits on FX’s hit TV series Reservation Dogs. Rising star Lily Gladstone, who has received accolades for her role in the highly anticipated Killers of the Flower Moon, plays the title character, Jax.
Fancy Dance follows Jax as she searches for her disappeared sister and cares for her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olsen) on the Seneca-Caguya Reservation in Oklahoma. It’s mystery narrative that contains multitudes: a coming-of-age story and a searing look at how colonial systems violently collide with the lives of its Indigenous characters. But far from fixating on tragedy, the film centers on its characters’ strength and joy as they navigate the complexities inherent in moving through a colonized world.
Representation and intergenerational healing are threads that weave together the films the festival is spotlighting. Both are central to Sallee’s work. Sallee is known for sound-rich shorts that uplift Indigenous and queer identities, such Dear Kin, a series of cinematic love letters to Indigenous queer relatives.
Sallee said when she started out in media, she never pictured herself behind the camera. After working as a sound editor at KNBA, she went on to study recording arts, aspiring to work on Hollywood films. Sallee said achieving that dream and getting an inside look at the industry inspired her transition into filmmaking.
“I think there’s so much more to tell and so much more to share in our communities,” she said. “I’m always striving to do in it a really high-quality, cinematic way.”
For Sallee, making films that center queerness and Indigeneity is a way to celebrate identities she didn’t always feel comfortable claiming.
“It’s been part of my healing too — embracing those identities,” Sallee said. “I grew up in Eagle River and Anchorage, in a predominantly white system with a lot of stereotypes. I think it took a while for me to really fully embrace those parts of me.”
Sallee’s Inupiaq values are embedded into every aspect of her filmmaking, including her soundtracks. Most of her films feature an original score centered around the drum.
“I did this piece when I worked in radio about Inupiaq drum and dance traditions,” Sallee said. “I remember this elder talking about [how] the drum is like the heartbeat of the community, and how so much of our culture and stories revolve around our music.”
Building Future Leaders showcases how the Alaska Native Heritage Center has impacted multiple generations of former staff member Tatiana Ticknor’s family. Alaska Art Alliance focuses on Leon Kinneeveauk’s journey to healing from addiction and incarceration through ivory carving, and how he supports other Native men to do the same.
“Representation across the board matters, and we are elated to partner with the Sundance Institute to uplift two incredible Alaska Native filmmakers and screenwriters,” said Emily Edenshaw, ANHC’s President and CEO. “Our intention is to create a space of community, dialogue, and celebration around film creation and the themes of Culture, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), and the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA), key themes of the ANHC films by Alexis Sallee and the film Fancy Dance.”
Kaitlin Armstrong is an Anchorage-based writer and audio producer. She hosts The Alaska Myth, a podcast about the myths that shape how Alaskans view our history and ourselves.