Timber and Totem Poles (1950)

Cultural Practice

As in this depiction of carving sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, many of the mid-20th century films in the collection document cultural practices.

Parker Family Reunion (Comanche), 1956

Family

AIFG films can be a source of images and names of elders, family members, tribal lands, and communities.

How to Make Frybread (ca.1972)

Community Video

Among AIFG holdings are films by Native filmmakers about their communities. Products of school and community video projects that began in the late 1960s, these films show emerging Native voices and visions from within the communities.

Supai Indians (1946)

Community

AIFG films can provide documentation of changing Native lifeways, as in this film about the Supai community who live in Grand Canyon.

Arts and Crafts of the Southwest Indians (1940)

Artist

Mrs. Esther Honanie of Shungopavi Village, Second Mesa, Arizona, demonstrates Hopi yucca basketry. In this film, she is joined by her daughter Adeline. A number of AIFG films capture artists at work and show how they teach fine arts practices to the next generation.

Southwest Indian Dances (1947)

History

Many of the AIFG films capture public dances, pow-wows, and ceremonials, giving insight into tribal cultural practice at specific historic times and places in the 20th century.

A.I. Film News

AIFG moving to AIFilmGathering.org

After a dozen years at University of Arizona, it has become necessary to move the project to a private server to keep access free and to protect information sovereignty of participating peoples. Please visit the reconfigured site at aifilmgathering.org

See you in 2026 at the new site!

Find Tribesourced films at Tribesourcingfilm.com

A subset of films from the AIFG have been repatriated through a process we call "tribesourcing." Members of U.S. Southwest communities represented in the films are invited to record new narrations from the insider perspective, thereby countering the midcentury, external, "voice of god" narrator.

Welcome

The AIFG, renamed "American Indian Film Gathering" has been relocated to aifilmgathering.org. Apologies for the inconvenience. Please visit us at the new site.

For questions or comments, please send an email to aifg@email.arizona.edu