About 4 times a year a DVD comes to our door and makes us wonder. It's usually from some processing center that we don't know and we think..."did we order something from Amazon?" You'd think by now we would remember that we subscribe to an excellent DVD magazine called Wholphin by the makers of McSweeney's.
Wholphin is essentially a DVD with short films- animated, fiction, docs, scripted comedies, unscripted comedies, art installations, etc. Tonight when we plugged the latest into the DVD machine we were not disappointed. Every once in awhile the W will release a crazy thing I didn't know. Something so big I can't believe it arrived on my doorstep. AMERICAN OUTRAGE was one of those films.
Essentially this film follows two Shoshone Indian sisters, Mary and Carrie Dann, and their fight over their land with the US government, oh wait I mean US Mining Corporations. The Wholphin sums it up best..."In a nutshell, for the past 30 years the U.S. government has been quietly, illegally, re-claiming land it had previously ceded to Shoshone Indians and then selling it off to various mining interests. Did you know about this?"
Ok, so this is like my brother giving me his oldest hot wheels when I was 5 and then later realizing it had special powers and putting me in a choke hold and taking it way from me... right? I think so. This film was a riveting and beautiful tribute to these women and the Shoshone people. My husband and I couldn't get over the roughhousing the BLM officials inflicted on these women. Seriously it was astounding and outrageous. It's no wonder the United Nations condemned the actions of the US and their attempted seizure of Shoshone land in Nevada.
Right now on Wholphin's main page you can watch a clip of the doc.
Also, here's a mind boggling interview with the filmmakers Beth & George Gage.
(George F. Lee, Star Bulletin/AP Photo)
