BLOODLINES: Indigenous Horror Film Showcase

8:00 PM Doors Open | 8:30 - 11:30 PM Film Screenings

MATURE AUDIENCE

What is October without movies that haunt? Join curator and Tulsa Artist Fellow Colleen Thurston (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) for a night of terrifying Indigenous stories that confront the dark forces of colonial assimilation while drawing on ancestral knowledge and supernatural figures. The program also honors the late Oneida actor Graham Greene, whose unforgettable performance in Clearcut anchors the showcase.

A conversation between directors Ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby (Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians) and Oklahoma's own Skull Crawlers Orrin Ponkilla (Absentee Shawnee) and Cary Thomas Cody (Kiowa) will follow the screening.

Featuring:
The Beguiling by Ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby
File Under Miscellaneous by Jeff Barnaby
Wakening by Danis Goulet
and the premiere of Crooked Face, a new film by The Skull Crawlers

Followed by:
CLEARCUT, an eco-horror revenge thriller featuring the late Graham Greene (Oneida). At its release in 1992, Clearcut was described as "A thriller-fable about oppression and rebellion in modern terms. But it’s also about the hell of answered prayers, the nightmare of seeing your brutal fantasies come alive." (Michael Wilmington, Los Angeles Times) In Clearcut, Greene is at his best playing the victim-villian, a terrifying yet mesmerizing character that will stay with you, perhaps forever.

ABOUT THE FILMS

The Beguiling (2024, 15’, USA) Writer/Director: Ishkwaazhe Shane McSauby. Executive Producer: Jess X. Snow. Cinematographer: Shaandiin Tome. Composer: Mato Standing Soldier. Starring: Benairen Kane and Kim Savarino.
What seems to be a burgeoning romance between two Indigenous people takes a sinister turn as one grows suspicious of the other. When confronted, deceit turns their romantic evening into a darkly comedic nightmare.

File Under Miscellaneous (2010, 8’, CAN) Writer/Director: Jeff Barnaby. Producer: John Christou. Starring: Glenn Gould and Arthur Holden.
Set in a dystopic metropolitan hellscape: a spiritually exhausted and destitute Mi'gMaq man has resolved to assimilate into the ruling culture. He visits a surgical clinic - the display window littered with skin and limb samples - and undergoes a gruesome procedure to rid him of his red skin.

Wakening by Danis Goulet (2013, 9’, CAN) Director: Danis Goulet. Writer: Tony Elliot. Starring Gail Maurice and Sarah Podemski.
In the near future, the environment has been destroyed and society suffocates under a brutal military occupation. A lone Cree wanderer Wesakechak searches an urban war zone to find the ancient and dangerous Weetigo to help fight against the occupiers.

Crooked Face (2025, USA) Writer/Director Cary Thomas Cody Cary Thomas Cody. Producer: Orrin Ponkilla and Mark “Doc” Cody. Cinematographer: Jordan Nicks. Starring: Kate Cody and CJ Valentine.World Premiere.
When a woman begins to sense a dark entity stalking her, she must resist the urge to look, or risk being cursed with 'crooked face,' a terrifying affliction warned of in her cultural lore.

Clearcut (1991, 100’, CAN) Director: Rsyzard Bugajsk. Writers: M.T. Kelly and Robert Forsyth. Producer: Ian McDougall and Stephen J. Roth. Starring: Ron Lea, Graham Greene and Michael Hogan.
A white lawyer finds his values shaken when he is paired with an angry Indigenous activist who insists on kidnapping the head of a logging company to teach him the price of his destruction.

Colleen Thurston is a filmmaker and film curator from Tulsa, Oklahoma. Colleen has produced for the Smithsonian Channel, Vox, PBS, and federal, tribal, and nonprofit organizations. Her work has screened at international film festivals and broadcast nationwide and has received support from Firelight Media, the Sundance Institute, Patagonia, the Redford Center, and Creative Capital. Colleen is the founder of the Indigenous Moving Image Archive project and has curated film programs for institutions such as the Momentary (Bentonville, AR), the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), UCLA Film and Television Archives, Vidiots (Los Angeles, CA), and numerous film festivals. Colleen is the project producer for the Indigenous video series Native Lens (Rocky Mountain PBS / KSUT Tribal Radio) and a senior programmer for Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. Colleen is a 2024-25 International Documentary Association Fellow and a 2025-2027 Tulsa Artist Fellow. She is a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Tulsa Artist Fellowship’s third annual Open House, taking place from October 3-5, 2025, embodies our commitment to nurturing Tulsa and its visionary artistic practitioners. Programs foster interconnectedness through community care and collaboration.

Host or Publisher Philbrook Museum of Art