Balerno Village Screen is delighted to be bringing Neither Wolf Nor Dog to our community cinema. And we also look forward to welcome the film’s Scottish Director Steven Lewis Simpson to Balerno who will join us for a post film discussion. This independent film has been heralded as a landmark Native American film and has garnered broad support from audiences across the US.
Adapted from the acclaimed novel by Kent Nerburn, this funny and deeply moving film follows an author who gets sucked into the heart of contemporary Native American life in the sparse lands of the Dakotas by a 95-year-old Lakota elder. Kent Nerburn (Christopher Sweeney), a good-hearted, white American family man and writer, receives a mysterious call from a distant Indian reservation regarding an oral history book he made with Red Lake Ojibwe reservation students in northern Minnesota.
Despite misgivings, Kent travels across America’s northern plains to arrive at the bleak, poverty-stricken reservation deep in the high plains of the Dakotas. The old man, Dan (Dave Bald Eagle), who lives alone in a clapboard shack back in the hills with his only real companions—his dog, a close friend named Grover (Richard Ray Whitman) and his granddaughter, Wenonah (Roseanne Supernault)—interrogates Kent as to his motives for working with Indian people.
Once satisfied he is not a turquoise clad “wannabe” spouting Indian philosophy, Dan recounts the story of American history from the Native point of view. As the stories pour from Dan, Kent’s understanding of the world is turned upside down. An inanimate landscape comes alive, and a history he thought he knew is called into question.
Expected evening timings:
- Doors open 7pm.
- Film screens 7:30pm
- Post film discussion: 9.20pm
- End around 10.20pm.
Balerno Village Screen is a community cinema normally free to attend and funded by donations. On this ocassion, as this film is independent and as we have Steven joining us, we have decided to ticket this event to help us recover the costs for this special screening night. Ticket refunds are allowed up to 1 week ahead of the event.