Museum open at 12:00pm
Cinema is closed now
Museum open at 12:00pm
Cinema is closed now
The Power of Community: A Film Screening and Discussion with Sky Hopinka, a guest at this year’s TAURON New Horizons International Film Festival
film screening and discussion
31.07.2026 20:00
Join us for a screening of two films and a discussion with Sky Hopinka—a multidisciplinary artist who focuses primarily on the identity of Indigenous peoples of North America and language as the foundation of cultural autonomy. Following the screening, visual artist Weronika Zalewska will speak with the filmmaker. The discussion will be held in English.
Sky Hopinka is a guest at this year’s TAURON New Horizons International Film Festival, and his film “Powwow People” will be presented during the festival as part of a special series of films selected by each member of this year’s jury.
At KINOMUZEUM, we’ll see two films by Sky Hopinka. The evening will open with the artist’s short film I’ll Remember You as You Were, not as What You’ll Become (2016). It is a cinematic elegy for the Indigenous poet Diane Burns, in which Hopinka weaves together archival footage, images of powwow dancers, and the Ho-Chunk understanding of reincarnation into a dense, hallucinatory meditation on memory and duration.
Sky Hopinka’s second film – Powwow People (2025) – invites viewers into the vibrant, pulsating world of the powwow – a gathering where dance, attire, and movement become vehicles for identity, memory, and community. Hopinka, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, did not, however, want to film this sacred gathering from the outside, with an alienating, appropriating gaze. Consequently, he became a co-organizer of the powwow himself, inviting dancers, vendors, and spectators to participate in a consciously constructed collaboration. Powwow People draws on cinéma vérité, but does not pretend to be transparent. The camera moves among the gathering with extraordinary precision, discreetly drawing the viewer into the intimate, meaning-laden space of the community. Filmed over three days and structured around a single day – from morning to night – the film shatters exploitative ethnographic tropes from within. The participants’ arrivals, preparations, and performances weave a tapestry of memory, movement, humor, and cultural resonance, leading to a hypnotic climax: a 30-minute, uninterrupted shot of the Northern Traditional dance. Powwow People is a cinematic experience of rare intensity that is well worth experiencing.
[Dorota Lech]