2/22/2012 First Person Radio

Listen in as First Person Radio hosts Laura Waterman Wittstock and Miguel Vargas talk to four artists about the New Indigenous Film Festival, a co-presentation of Intermedia Arts and MIGIZI Communications. All of the feature films are premiering in the festival that opens on February 23rd in Minneapolis, MN. Curator John Gwinn is joined by Theresa Sweetland, and Armand Garnet Ruffo.

Over the last fifteen years, John Gwinn's work has been concentrated on combining media arts with youth development and education. He co-founded Phillips Community Television (PCTV) in the early 1990’s, and through that organization, helped to empower thousands of Minneapolis teenagers to tell their own stories through video, photography and other media. In December, 2008, he began a new job with Migizi Communications, doing the same kind of youth media work, specifically focusing on American Indian youth. He has produced media pieces that have been shown at festivals around the country and internationally, and has curated film and video showings in Minneapolis at several venues.

Armand Garnet Ruffo, Ojibwe. was born in the small northern town of Chapleau, Ontario and currently resides in Ottawa, where he teaches Native literature and creative writing at Carleton University. He has previously taught creative writing at both the Banff Centre for the Arts and the En'owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, British Columbia. A Windigo Tale is his feature directorial debut. The original play script won the CBC Arts Performance Showcase Award, and, in 2003, it went into feature script development with acclaimed Canadian playwright and filmmaker Colleen Murphy.

Theresa Sweetland is the Executive/Artistic Director of Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis. Her passion and know-how have brought together diverse sectors of the community, artists and developers, elders and teens, prisoners and poets, to build collaborations and partnerships that expand and enrich lives and build community. She holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Minnesota and a Masters degree in Urban and Regional Planning from The University of Minnesota Hubert H Humphrey School of Public Affairs. Theresa is a Co-Founding Artistic Director of B-Girl Be, the world’s first international women in hip hop summit.