- Little Wound teacher Dan Snethen (right) and student in "Reservation Realities"
The South Dakota State Film Festival happens this week, Thursday through Sunday, in Aberdeen. My friend and neighbor Dan Snethen is taking nine of his students from Little Wound High School to Aberdeen for the shows. Those students aren't just going to watch movies; they're going to show their own production. Little Wound's "Reservation Realities," a nine-minute film on the anguish and the hope they feel growing up on the Pine Ridge reservation, has received a jury award for South Dakota significance.
This short film plays Friday night on the big screen at the downtown Capitol Theatre. If you can't get to Aberdeen to watch and meet the filmmakers, you can see it online now:
I find the outdoor shots particularly compelling, showing these students in the context of the vast, stark landscape many of us call home.
The film moves effectively from pain to salvation. Be sure to watch six minutes in, where one young man says that while home sometimes feels like a prison, the school in Kyle feels like an escape, a second home, a safehouse. The teachers and lunch ladies become family. If you work in a school, especially in the difficult conditions of the reservation, you make a difference.
Dan Snethen knows he makes a difference. That's why he's taking his young filmmakers across the state this weekend. "We are ready to climb," say these students. Snethen is pointing them toward all the hills he can find.
p.s.: Dan Snethen is a science teacher.