The Power of Short Forms in the Long Rise of Indigenous Film & TV

The Marilyn T. and Byron C. Shutz Lecture Series Presents Origin Stories: the Power of Short Forms in the Long Rise of Indigenous Film and Television with Joanne Hearne. Join us Friday, November 21 at 6:00 p.m. in the UMKC Fine Arts Building, Room 106.

Indigenous makers have been vital creative catalysts in digital production, using technology as a tool for storytelling, activism, and cultural continuity. In this presentation, Hearne will explore the power of short-form media in Indigenous film, video, and animation history. She will be highlighting Indigenous filmmakers' works, as well as their power and presence in the media landscape.

Joanna Hearne is the Jeanne Hoffman Smith Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of Oklahoma, where her work spans Native American and global Indigenous media studies, archival recoveries of Indigenous presence in cinema history, and contemporary digital media, digital storytelling, and animation. Her books argue for the centrality of Indigenous images and image-making to American film history. She is the author of Native Recognition: Indigenous Cinema and the Western (SUNY Press, 2012) and Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising (University of Nebraska Press, 2012). She is also the co-editor of the essay collections ReFocus: The Films of Wallace Fox (Edinburgh University Press, 2022) and By Their Work: Indigenous Women's Digital Media in North America (University of Minnesota Press, 2025).