Word: kwakiutls
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Land of the War Canoes" is amazing because Curtis was able to direct members of the Kwakiutl tribe in Vancouver, B.C., to re-enact the story of a quest for a vision and its results in the time before the Indians had been assimilated into white culture. From the anthropological standpoint this film is invaluable. From the cinematic stabdpoint, the framing, lighting, and composition are every bit as classic as the stills of the period which Curtis is more famous for. The film has the added excitement of light and water leaks apparently left from the original footage...
...told that Canadians can't stand American women in slacks, Miss Craven journeyed north by small boat from Vancouver into the Queen Charlotte Straits of British Columbia in search of adventure and material. Her trip ended at the top of King-come Inlet, in a village of the Kwakiutl Indians. Kingcome is a place of icy water, deep, fir-trimmed inlets, returning salmon, foraging killer whales, overwhelming beauty and, for the once proud Kwakiutls, overwhelming sadness. Even the young are not sure they can face going "outside" to school and trying to live like white men. But they...
...contention," Feder declares, "is that anyone can appreciate Indian art, regardless of his knowledge, background or previous experience." Perhaps-but in a strictly limited way. Few people could encounter the carved ceremonial masks of the Northwest Coast Indians, the Tlingit. Kwakiutl or Tsimshian, with their exquisite shell-inlay work and flowing, knife-blade forms that so inexplicably resemble archaic Chinese bronze decoration, without feeling some instant response to the vitality of their stylistic language. Through their art runs a supreme capacity to make sensation concrete: what European artist, for instance, could develop a more concise epigram of a grizzly bear...
...most mysterious and commanding work in the show is by a young New York sculptor. Nancy Graves. 30. Her Shaman is a group of ten objects made of latex, muslin and wire, hanging from the ceiling. They derive (she says) from the ceremonial costumes worn by priests of the Kwakiutl Indian tribe in North America, and they have an eerie "presence," as if the magicians, like shadows, had vacated the elaborate cloaks and headdresses, which were also their skins of power, and left the shucked-off relics behind them, battered but still imbued with magical force...