March 2005

Phil Lucas (Choctaw) has worked in film and television for thirty years, and received the Taos Mountain Award for lifetime achievement from the Taos Talking Picture Festival in 1999. Among the subjects he has covered are health and well-being in Native communities, Native rights, and Native arts. His film Restoring the Sacred Circle won the Best Public Service Award at the 2002 American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco. Lucas was a participant in the 1999 Sundance Screenwriter's Lab. He has taught filmmaking workshops for young Native people and now teaches media communications and technology at Bellevue Community College, where he coordinated an American Indian film festival in 2004. Lucas lives in Issaquah, Washington.

Lucas on Vis a Vis: Native Tongues: "It was really wonderful to bring together an Aboriginal artist and an American Indian performance artist. You begin to see, even though they are from clear across the world apart from one another, the similarities: the way they approach their work and the fact that because of the colonization process that happened to both peoples that they react in similar ways. This is a tremendous amount of creativity and I like the idea of the challenge to the human spirit and the ability to overcome that through their work."

Screened by NMAI

• Vis á Vis: Native Tongues (2003) co-director
• Winds of Change: A Matter of Promises (1999) director
• American Indian Dance Theatre: Dances for the New Generation (1996) co-producer, director
  
• Storytellers of the Pacific: Identity (1996) co-producer, co-director
  
• Storytellers of the Pacific: Self-Determination (1996) co-producer, co-director
• Voyage of Discovery (1990) producer, director
• The Great Wolf and Little Mouse Sister (1984) producer, director

Image credit: Phil Lucas - courtesy of the filmmaker