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Native Sun News Today: Film shot at Pine Ridge up for early release

Monday, November 7, 2016

The late Dave Bald Eagle (left) and Richard Ray Whitman star in upcoming release of “Neither Wolf Nor Dog”, based on an award-winning novel by the same name and filmed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Photo by Talli Nauman

Early release of ‘Neither Wolf Nor Dog’
Film features late Dave Bald Eagle
By Talli Nauman
Native Sun News Today
Health &Environment Editor
nativesunnews.today

HOF, Germany –– Straight from its German premiere at the Hof International Film Festival here Oct. 25-30, Steven Lewis Simpson's acclaimed, screen adaptation of the best-selling Native American novel Neither Wolf Nor Dog is now available to the public three months ahead of its theatrical release date.

The feature-length movie recently filmed on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation stars late Lakota elder Dave Bald Eagle, Christopher Sweeney, Richard Ray Whitman, Roseanne Supernault, Tatanka Means, Zahn McClarnon, and Harlen Standing Bear Sr.

While Simpson is lining up the theatrical release in January and DVD release in March, he has launched an internet Kickstarter campaign from now until Nov. 13, in which supporters will get the DVD immediately for helping with distribution efforts, he told the Native Sun News Today.

“Neither Wolf Nor Dog” earned a five-star review after its world’s premier during the Edinburgh International Film Festival, oldest continuously running film festival on earth. The film is one of only five U.S.-made productions to premiere at Hof.

Steven Lewis Simpson on Vimeo: Neither Wolf Nor Dog Trailer

Here, it was in the “amazing company” of the Nate Parker’s Sundance Film Festival record-breaker “The Birth of a Nation”, new films by famed director Jim Jarmusch and by Zoe Cassavettes, daughter of the great filmmaker John Cassavettes, as well as Ken Loach's Cannes Film Festival winner “I, Daniel Blake”, and new films by Wim Wenders and Werner Herzog,” Simpson noted.

“The film shows the beauty, tragedy, humor and power of Lakota country,” Simpson said. After Hollywood players failed in trying to produce it for 20 years, it became known as ‘the great unmade’ Native American screenplay, he recalled.

Simpson succeeded in making the movie on a shoestring budget, after a personal approach from the book’s author Kent Nerburn. Fans of the novel recently gave the film a standing ovation at a special screening.

The filmmaker and producer of Roaring Fire Films pointed out that the actors are also veterans of armed conflict. Dave Bald Eagle was all but left for dead during D-Day in World War II. Christopher Sweeney earned a Silver Star in the Gulf War, making him the one with the highest U.S. military medal of any established Hollywood actor today.

Richard Ray Whitman spent more days under fire than these noted veterans, as an activist during the 71-day Siege of Wounded Knee in 1973, when the U.S. government discharged as many as half a million bullets during a stand-off with American Indian Movement activists fighting on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.

Bald Eagle had relatives at the infamous 1890 Massacre of Wounded Knee Massacre there, where the film's climax was filmed. “Sacred ground for our stars,” said Simpson. “This wasn't your average movie shoot.”

Its IMDB score is tops at 9.1/10. The trailer can be viewed at vimeo.com/156544471. Find out more about the Kickstarter campaign at tinyurl.com/jl9te9m.