Navajo Boy Screens in Berlin in January 2016

Yellow Oscar Film The Return of Navajo Boy

The Return of Navajo Boy will be screening in Berlin Babylon Cinema on January 20th at 8 pm with the presence of film director Jeff Spitz, who will receive after the screening the Uranium Film Festival’s Yellow Oscar Award. „We are very proud to be part of International Uranium Film Festival“, says Jeff Spitz. "And we are very pleased and proud to present The Return of Navajo Boy with its director in one of the most traditional movie theatres of Berlin", says festival director Norbert G. Suchanek. The Babylon Kino is located at Rosa Luxemburg Platz, very close to Berlin Alexanderplatz: http://www.babylonberlin.de

“The 2000 produced moving documentary The Return of Navajo Boy, with its Epilogue and webisodes, demonstrates how a skilful film made with a social conscience - and a social impact campaign - can change the world", says the 2015 Uranium Film Festival judge Robert del Tredici.

THE RETURN OF NAVAJO BOY and Epilogue - USA 2000/2008, 57 min and 15 min Epilogue, Documentary, English, Director: Jeff Spitz, Produced by Jeff Spitz and Bennie Klain, http://groundswellfilms.org/about/ - Film website: www.navajoboy.com

About the film: The film chronicles an extraordinary chain of events, beginning with the appearance of a 1950s film reel, which lead to the return of a long lost brother to his Navajo family. Living for more than six decades in Monument Valley (on the Arizona/Utah border), the Cly family has an extraordinary history in pictures. Since the1930′s, family members have appeared as unidentified subjects in countless photographs and films shot in Monument Valley including various postcards, Hollywood Westerns and a rare home-movie by legendary director John Ford. But it is the sudden appearance of a rarely seen vintage film that affects their lives the most. With the return of “Navajo Boy,” Elsie seizes the opportunity to tell her family’s story for the first time, offering a unique perspective to the history of the American west. Using a variety of still photos and moving images from the 40s and 50s and telling their family story in their own voices, the Clys shed light on the Native side of picture making and uranium mining in Monument Valley.  

In addition: The Return of Navajo Boy is a documentary that reunited a Navajo family and triggered a federal investigation into uranium contamination. It tells the story of Elsie Mae Begay, whose history in pictures reveals an incredible and ongoing struggle for environmental justice. The powerful epilogue (produced in 2008) shows how the film and Groundswell Educational Films’ outreach campaign create news and rally supporters including Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA). The Chairm

an of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform mandated a clean-up plan by the five agencies that are responsible for uranium contamination. The documentary, epilogue and now 15 webisodes have leveraged several remarkable impacts: Bernie Cly, one of the Navajo family featured, has been awarded $100,000 in compensation from the US government; the EPA demolished a dangerous house made out of uranium which was featured in the film and completed its $8 million dollar clean up of the abandoned uranium mine located in the backyard of the Navajo family featured in the documentary. The most recent webisode in April 2014, informs viewers that the Navajo tribe won the largest environmental settlement in American history, $1 billion payout from Kerr-McGee, the corporate contaminator exposed by the documentary. 

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:  „I entered the world of indigenous film Suddenly without any previous contact with Native Americans. I just tried to find the people in an old film from the 1950s called Navajo Boy. My search for them took me into Monument Valley and into an astonishing Navajo family history involving Hollywood, uranium mining, and a missing baby. The Cly family accepted me. We had no idea where the documentary process was going to lead us. I learned how to see things from the inside out and not like a reporter looking in from outside. Together we made the film from the Navajo point of view. I feel blessed in many ways, particularly because I got to join in this family's struggle and help them reunite with a long lost brother. But even now it is hard for us to figure out what to do about the revelations of uranium contamination and the appalling health hazards that we put on screen. The Return of Navajo Boy has stunned people all over the world. It triggered a federal investigation of Navajo uranium houses. We found sponsors to help the Navajo family in the film travel with it to Washington DC and colleges nationwide. Their story continues at http://navajoboy.com where viewers can watch webisodes and see how this groundswell leads toward environmental justice.“ Jeff Spitz

The Return of Navajo Boy, a film that can change the world!

Location and date: Berlin Babylon Kino, January 20th,  2016, at 20 Uhr or 8 pm.
Rosa-Luxemburg-Str. 30, U-Bahn: Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz  /  S-Bahn: Alexanderplatz