[nativestudies-l] FILM: The Exiles at the Boston MFA Sept 26, 27 and other dates

[Alyssa Mt. Pleasant]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	The Exiles at the MFA Sept 26
Date: 	Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:37:43 -0400
From: 	Stefanie Lubkowski <SLubkowski at mfa.org>



The MFA Film Program is proud to to present a 6 show engagement of a 
restored 35 mm print of Kent MacKenzie's 1961 film */The Exiles/, 
September 26-October 3*.  This is the first time that /The Exiles/ has 
been widely available for theatrical engagements.  /The Exiles/, was 
possibly inspired by Kent MacKenzie's friendship with Native American 
artist and dancer Tom Two Arrows, whom he met when they were both summer 
camp counselors in Maine during Kent's years at Dartmouth.   Gritty, 
realistic and far ahead of its time (in a period when Hollywood films 
featured noble savages), the script for /The Exiles/ was created 
exclusively from recorded interviews with the participants and with 
their ongoing input during the shooting of the film. Native American 
writers and activists have long considered the film as one of first 
works of art to portray modern life honestly and as an important 
forerunner for the cultural renaissance of American Indian fiction, 
poetry, filmmaking and theater starting in the 1970s.  /The Exiles/ is 
also an artifact of a lost time and place. In the early 1960s, 
developers and city planners not only razed the existing homes and 
tenements of Bunker Hill, which Kent documents in both his first film, 
/Bunker Hill-1956/, and in/ The Exiles/, they leveled much of the hill 
itself - replacing a residential neighborhood with high-rises, office 
buildings and more recently, the Walt Disney Concert Hall. 

 

"/The Exiles/ is almost unbearably intimate, allowing us to ride along 
for a raucous night on the town while simultaneously peering into its 
deeply conflicted characters' souls."  -- LA Times

Kent MacKenzie was born in England in 1930.  He spent much of his 
childhood shuttling back and forth between England and New York.  Kent 
attended Dartmouth College ,where he studied English literature and film 
writing.  After several years in the army, Kent moved to California and 
enrolled in University of Southern California Cinema Department.  His 
student film, the documentary /Bunker Hill-1956/ was screened at the 
Edinburgh Film Festival where it won a Silver Award.  /The Exiles/ was 
his second feature film.  Kent edited, produced and directed one other 
feature film, /Saturday Morning/, in 1971 before he passed away in Marin 
County, California in May 1980.

Tickets: Members, seniors and students $8; general admission $10. 
Discount matinee prices (weekday until 5 pm; weekends until 12:30 pm) 
are $6, $7.  To purchase please call the box office at 617-369-3306 or 
online at www.mfa.org/film <http://www.mfa.org/film>. 

 

*/The Exiles/*

Fri. Sept. 26 6:45 pm

Sat. Sept 27 7:30 pm

Wed. Oct. 1 6:45 pm

Fri. Oct. 3 4:30 pm

Sat. Oct. 4 12:00 pm

Wed. Oct. 8 5:00 pm

/The Exiles/ by Kent MacKenzie (1961, 72 min.). Three years in the 
making, /The Exiles/  chronicles a day in the life of a group of 
twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s 
to live in the district of Bunker Hill in Los Angeles. Bunker Hill was 
then a blighted residential locality of decayed Victorian mansions, 
sometimes featured in the writings of Raymond Chandler, John Fante and 
Charles Bukowski. The structure of the film is that of a narrative 
feature, the script pieced together from interviews with the documentary 
subjects. /The New Yorker/ critic Richard Brody says, "Miraculous...few 
directors in the history of cinema have so skillfully and deeply joined 
a sense of place with the subtle flux of inner life." /The Exiles/ has 
recently been restored to its full glory with support from, among 
others, director Charles Burnett. /The Exiles/ shares similarities with 
Burnett's legendary /Killer of Sheep/: both are gritty, frills-free 
depictions of marginalized Los Angeles communities.

 

 
Stefanie Lubkowski
Film & Concerts Press Officer
Museum of Fine arts, Boston
465 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
617-369-3687
slubkowski at mfa.org
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