Mar 15th 2019

Sky Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk nation of Wisconsin and a descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, creates experimental documentaries around personal notions of homeland and the way that language acts as a keeper of culture. Join Hopinka for a screening and moderated discussion of his recent work in the Edlis Neeson Theater.

Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga, b. 1984) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and is currently based out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. His video work centers around personal positions of indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture, and the play between the known and the unknowable. Hopinka received his BA from Portland State University in liberal arts. In Portland, he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. Hopinka received his MFA in film, video, animation, and new genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is currently a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow for 2019.

His work has played at various festivals including ImagineNATIVE Media and Arts Festival, Images, Wavelengths, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Antimatter, Chicago Underground Film Festival, Flex Fest, and Projections. His work was a part of the 2016 Wisconsin Triennial and the 2017 Whitney Biennial. Hopinka was awarded jury prizes at the Onion City Film Festival, the More with Less Award at the 2016 Images Festival, the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 54th Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Berwick New Cinema Award at the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival and the Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship for Individual Artists in the emerging artist category for 2018.

MCA Screenings feature works of contemporary cinema that expand traditional notions of moviegoing and are organized by Christy LeMaster, Assistant Curator of Public Programs.

Official Website

More events on this date

Tags: , , , ,