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July 2007
 In
2007, director Bennie Klain (Navajo)
was selected to participate in Tribeca All Access, a professional
development program for emerging filmmakers held during the Tribeca
Film Festival. His feature documentary Weaving Worlds premiered
at the 2007 South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival in
Austin, Texas. His short film Yada Yada won the Teueikan
Second Prize at Montreal's First Peoples' Festival in 2003. A
fluent Navajo speaker, he often incorporates the language into
his work. Klain co-produced and worked as a translator for The
Return of Navajo Boy, directed by Jeff Spitz, which screened
at more than 60 festivals and has received many honors. Klain
serves as the Native Programming Liason for the Ciné las
Americás Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where his production
company, TricksterFilms, is based. His early media experience
was in radio. Klain produced Windsongs, a Native American
music program syndicated for public radio. He anchored three award-winning
Navajo language newscasts daily at the Navajo radio station KTNN.
Klain graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, in Radio-Television-Film.
Klain on Yada Yada: "The
film wasn't meant to provide clear cut answers, but rather to
provoke the viewers into examining some of the cultural baggage
of daily American life where different groups in the American
landscape are all vying for a piece of the pie."
"The idea that the national anthem can be sung in Navajo
really throws people off. People are averse to thinking that because
of the fractured history of Native Americans that there would
be this really patriotic sounding song that could be sung in the
Navajo language."
Screened by NMAI
Image credit:
Bennie Klain - courtesy of the filmmaker.
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