Fancy Dance Film Screening

As part of our celebration of Indigenous women during Women’s History Month, the American Indian and Indigenous studies Program is offering a special one-time screening of Fancy Dance prior to the film’s national distribution.

Film screening of Fancy Dance (2022) - 6PM

Q&A Panel with Writer and Director, Erica Tremblay (Seneca-Cayuga Nation), and Stephen Henhawk (Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ, the Cayuga Nation), Moderated by Professor Jeffrey Palmer (Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma) - 7:30PM

Premiering for the first time since the 2023 Sundance Film Festival, Erica Tremblay, brings the highly acclaimed film, Fancy Dance, to Cornell Cinema located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ (the Cayuga Nation).

FILM SYNOPSIS: Since her sister’s disappearance, Jax (Lily Gladstone) has cared for her niece Roki (Isabel Deroy-Olson) by scraping by on the Seneca-Cayuga Reservation in Oklahoma. At the risk of losing custody to Jax’s father, Frank (Shea Whigham), the pair hit the road and scour the backcountry to track down Roki’s mother in time for the powwow. What begins as a search gradually turns into a far deeper investigation into the complexities and contradictions of Indigenous women moving through a colonized world and at the mercy of a failed justice system.

ERICA TREMBLAY (Seneca-Cayuga Nation) - Writer & Director

Tremblay is a Sundance Screenwriters and Directors Lab fellow and an SFFilm Rainin Grant recipient. Tremblay was the executive story editor on Dark Winds, an AMC series produced by George R.R. Martin and Robert Redford. She is an executive story editor Reservation Dogs and has directed an episode. Together with Sterlin Harjo, she will be co-writing and executive producing a series adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Yellow Bird for Paramount+.

Co-sponsored by Performing and Media Arts, the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program, and Cornell Cinema. Part of American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program’s Women’s History Month-long celebration of Indigenous women, focusing on women’s social, cultural, political, and artistic contributions.

Free and open to the public!