Drums of Winter

Uksuum Cauyai: Drums of Winter, also referred to only as Drums of Winter is a ethnographic documentary on the culture of the Yup'ik people, focusing primarily on dance, music, and potlatch traditions in the community of Emmonak, on the shore of the Bering Sea. The film was produced through a "community-collaborative process" in which the subjects of the documentary had significant input as to the film's content and presentation. As a result, the film features conversations with individual Yup'ik in place of "the voice-over commentary by an unseen narrator that destroys the cinematic... integrity of so many so-called ethnographic films". Drums of Winter won awards at a number of film festivals, including the American Film Festival in 1989, the International Ethnographic Film Festival in 1990, the Alaska International Film Festival in 1995, the Festival of the Native Americas in 1996, and the Margaret Mead Film Festival in 2000. In 2006, Drums of Winter was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
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