The Taking
Now available on Blu-ray
The Taking
United States • 2021This illuminating essay uses film scenes to tell of the forced cultural appropriation of a world-famous landscape.
Monument Valley is one of the most recognizable landscapes in the world. Its iconographic use in American Westerns has had a lasting influence on stock photography, advertising, and tourism. The valley has been given mythical significance as an image of a “primitive West” firmly in the hands of white people and meant to be protected from intruders. The fact that Monument Valley is traditional Navajo territory has been obscured in the process.
A radical examination of Monument Valley’s representation in cinema and advertising since John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), The Taking scrutinizes how a site located on sovereign Navajo land came to embody the fantasy of the “Old West,” replete with self-perpetuating falsehoods, and why it continues to hold mythic significance in the global psyche.
Directed by: Alexandre O. Philippe
Written by: Alexandre O. Philippe
Featuring: Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Liza Black, Sir Christopher Frayling, Robert M. Bednar, John Bucher
Run time: 76 minutes
Language: English, Italian
Subtitles: English
Color: Color, Black & White
Format: 1.85:1
Sound: 5.1
NOW STREAMING
PAST SCREENINGS
Dairy Center for the Arts Boulder, CO • Denver Film Festival Denver, CO • Digital Gym Cinema San Diego, CA • Eckerd College Saint Petersburg, FL • Fantastic Fest Austin, TX • Firehouse Cinema New York, NY • Gateway Film Center Columbus, OH. •. Gimme Some Truth Winnipeg, MB • Hawai'i International Film Festival Honolulu, HI • Laemmle Glendale Glendale, CA • Laemmle Monica Film Center Santa Monica CA • Lightbox Film Center Philadelphia, PA • Lumiere Music Hall Beverly Hills, CA • Montclair Film Montclair, NJ • NorthwestFest Edmonton, AB • Pioneertown International Film Festival Pioneertown, CA • Portland Museum of Art Portland, ME • Santa Barbara International Film Festival Santa Barbara, CA • Time & Space Ltd Hudson, NY • VIFF Centre Vancouver, BC • Webster Film Series Saint Louis, MO
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