‘Voices Of The Pamunkey’ Screenings At W&L
Area residents are invited to join the Lenfest Outreach and Engagement Series on Oct. 14 at 5:30 p.m. in the Northern Auditorium on the Washington and Lee University campus for “Voices of the Pamunkey: Film Screenings and Q&A with Ethan Brown.”
Brown’s recent foray into filmmaking further expands his unique storytelling. Featured films include “First Landings” and the Emmy-nominated short documentary “Connecting Currents — Pamunkey River: Lifeblood of our People” for which Brown contributed photographic work.
The film screening is free and open to the public.
Brown is a featured artist in Kamen Gallery’s pop-up exhibit “Native Art & Ancestral Inspiration: Drawing Endurance.” The exhibit runs through Dec. 15 in the Kamen Gallery located in the Lenfest Center for the Arts.
Brown is a self-taught, multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and storyteller who is a citizen of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe and resides on the Pamunkey Reservation in King William. Deeply rooted in his cultural heritage, Brown’s work draws inspiration from Pamunkey history and tradition — intertwining themes of identity, community and nature through media such as gourd art, oil painting, sculpture, pottery and experimental filmmaking.
“First Landings” uses non-Western cinema to reflect on the far-reaching effects of European colonization of the Americas on Indigenous peoples. Interwoven storylines span Canada, Virginia and Mexico: a French fur trapper confronts questions of reality, a Powhatan boy experiences a traditional coming-of-age ceremony and Nahua carnival regalia embodies five centuries of resistance. These diverse scenes converge in a vision of lost cultural artifacts, represented by the Uttamusak stone — symbolizing both a warning from the past and hope for Indigenous futures through a dual image of the sun.
“Connecting Currents—Pamunkey River: Lifeblood of our People” (2020), produced with NOAA, documents how the Pamunkey River — lifeline of the tribe for over 400 years — faces environmental threats and how the Pamunkey people, in partnership with governmental agencies, are working to restore native fish population to this essential waterway.
Brown explained, “Filmmaking just allows me to go deeper and more complex with telling stories and creating experiences. It shares things like composition or else certain themes and images with my visual art, but with an added level of the unknown to the creative process. I like going back and forth between working on films or making visual art because they each have strengths of expression.”
As a speaker and educator, Brown has held artist residencies, given lectures and led workshops at Virginia Commonwealth University and beyond, sharing his and his community’s stories with new generations.
