Join us for the premiere of Alligator-Horses at Rice Media Center on Friday, March 21, 2014 (6-10pm). The film screening will be followed by a reception. And on Saturday, March 22 (9am-4pm), invited scholars and members of Rice faculty will discuss the film.
Alligator-Horses is a documentary about the so-called raunchy youth of 1830s America viewed through the lens of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Materials used to evoke our perspective of the time period include Penny Press newspapers, Davy Crockett Almanacs, Blackface minstrel songs and a cast of contemporary scholars including Rice Faculty and students. The three-hour documentary is structured around famous and lesser-known events, including King Phillip’s War, Davy Crockett’s tour of the northeast, the murder of New York prostitute Helen Jewett, Jim Crow at the Bowery Theater and the Anti-Abolition riots of 1834.
If you are interested in attending the film screening and conference, please RSVP via our contact form.
Brian will show excerpts from his film Geronimo‘s Country (still in progress) at this upcoming art installation. If you’re in Austin in November, hope you’ll get a chance to stop in and see it. Full show details below:
November 16-17 & 23-24; East Austin Studio Tour 2013
“Geronimo is out!” is a ceramic sculpture work in two parts presented by Cynthia Ann Lost Howling Wolf at Big Medium’s 12th East Austin Studio Tour.
Part one, “The Last Hold Out Band,” is a stoneware collection of twenty-one individual figures (detail, shown above) representing Geronimo and his Chiricahua Apaches following their surrender to the US Army in 1886.
Part two, “Skull-duggery”, includes more than thirty raku and pit fired skulls and masks as a reminder of the theft of Geronimo’s remains by the Yale University-based Skull & Bones Society.
Cynthia Ann Lost Howling Wolf, artist/sculptor
Cynthia Ann Lost Howling Wolf is a Yaqui/Apache Indian artist based in Texas. “Geronimo” is the culmination of several years reflecting on the Apaches and the themes of captivity and loss.
“Geronimo is out!’ will be exhibited November 16-17 and November 23-24 at Cobra Studios, 902 Gardner Road, unit #14, Austin, Texas. Part of the East Austin Studio Tour (EAST). Visit the tour website at: eastaustinstudiotour.com
Above: Photo taken in Houston, TX, 2003 or 2004. Pose inspired by a photo of the outlaws Jesse & Frank James although I think Doc Holiday a better fit for McEvilley. Like the famous dentist/sportin’ man, McEvilley never compromised his life style and like Holiday he died in bed…no bullets in his back.
A lot of fuss. Many words to remind us of a man of words. McEvilley’s dead but it’s the man I’m remembering, not the words.
Tuesday nights teaching class at Rice. Art & the Mind. Always late. Coffee cups (two of them) loaded. Slide trays jamming. It’s the history of everything he whispered. It was and is because I filmed all his lectures. Forty-two hours of talking, drinking and challenging his audience to join his fierce quest on the edge. “Is this our glory or is it our doom?” he says finally about western civilization. The cups are empty, the lights are dim, the work is done.
[Below, a montage of footage originally composed as a tribute in honor of Thomas McEvilley’s retirement from teaching at Rice University. Film by Brian Huberman.]
These bandanas (26 x 26 in.) are designed by Brian and screen-printed professionally by Black Swan Screen Printers in Houston.
Design inspired by this photo.
The bandanas are for sale, $10 each. To order, use the PayPal button below and follow the instructions for payment from there. We will ship the bandana(s) as promptly as possible.
Update [December 9, 2013]: The first edition chiricahua apache bandana bandanas are completely sold out! Thanks to all who expressed interest in the project and purchased one. Brian is considering doing another edition in the future, but has to prioritize finishing the latest film first! We’ll keep you posted on the blog.
American Indian activist and actor, Russell Means, with the author Brian Huberman. Means died on Oct 22, 2012. He was 72.
This is a photo of Russell Means shaking my hand at Rice Media Center April 20, 2001.
I think his full name was “Mean to his Horses.” He came to my class to speak about Indians and movies. A contract had already been agreed upon that required coffee be supplied him during the session…”lawsuit hot!”
A full-blood Lakota warrior, Means towered above me. Briefly, I imagined the last horrific moments of Custer’s men at the Little Bighorn who might have encountered such a person in hand to hand combat.
Talking about Hollywood westerns with Means was an equally fierce experience. I was quickly through the looking glass and forced to view the world from his point of view. History as genocide rather than Manifest Destiny. Heroes like Boone, Crockett and Kit Carson were reduced to a word…”killers.” Indian killers, rapers, land thieves, degenerates but doing God’s great work.
Means had little respect for the movies he had acted in considering them exploitation pieces and also lacking authenticity. “Leather in Summer!” was his derisive chant when describing how Hollywood insisted on dressing Indians in buckskins no matter the location or season. He did enjoy playing the Chief in Disney’s cartoon Pocahontas and also his character as a wise Indian in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers.
His greatest achievement it seems to me was his stand at Wounded Knee against the United States of America in 1973. A leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM) he survived an armed insurrection against the US Government. I asked him what he had hoped to achieve at Wounded Knee and he replied, “I expected to be killed.”
Means was not killed but spent time in prison and also acted in movies. Some call him a self promoter while others saw him as a great American Indian leader.
Means could be entertaining but he had a dark angry side that threatened violence. He described himself as an extraordinary man and I guess he probably was.
Brian Huberman is a working filmmaker interested in American history, Western film, the myth of the frontier and its complicated heroes, including Davy Crockett and Geronimo.
This blog is a casual documentation of his reports and rants from the field.
