August 2008
 Andrew
Okpeaha MacLean (Inupiat) is a filmmaker and playwright
from Barrow, Alaska. His short work Sikumi/On the Ice is
the first film to be written entirely in the Inupiaq language.
The film premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival where it
won a Special Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking. MacLean has recently
been featured in Filmmaker Magazine as one of 2008’s
“25 New Faces of Independent Film.
Other short films include Natchiliagniaqtuguk Aapagalu/Seal
Hunting with Dad, which premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film
Festival and was named one of the ten best short films at the
festival by IndieWire. His feature documentary When the Season
Is Good: Artists of Arctic Alaska, produced for the Alaska
Native Arts Foundation, premiered in 2004 at the National Museum
of Natural History. He has worked as a videographer for the Alaska
Native Education Program. MacLean, who is the co-founder of the
Inupiat Theatre in Barrow, directs and writes plays, including
Iliappaglu Tulukkaglu/The Poor Hunter and the Ravens. He
co-founded and served as the artistic director of Stickfigure
Productions, a theater company in Seattle, Washington. He received
his BA in Theater from the University of Washington. MacLean received
his MFA in film production from New York University, where he
was awarded the Martin E. Segal Prize for Film in 2004. He lives
in Brooklyn, New York.
"I am interested in making films that examine where we have
come from, who we are now, and who we are becoming as Native people,
and as human beings."
Screened by NMAI
Image credit: Andrew
Okpeaha MacLean - courtesy of the filmmaker
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