The Exiles

Winner of the National Society of Film Critics Film Heritage Award, The Exiles (1961) holds historical as well as artistic significance. After graduating from USC's film school in 1956, Kent Mackenzie asked some young Native American men and women living in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles (after relocating from Southwest reservations) to collaborate with him on a chronicle of their daily lives, resulting in a film in which the subjects are shown arguing, drinking, flirting, dancing, and driving around the neighborhood. Featuring documentary elements but clearly restaged for the camera, the movie ends with a revel on the hills above the city that underscores the principals' status as outsiders in the urban milieu. Praised by the few who saw it at festivals in the early ‘60s, The Exiles never received theatrical distribution and was essentially lost for nearly half a century, so its reappearance in a beautifully restored print capturing every nuance of the lustrous black-and-white cinematography is cause for celebration. The film exhibits the influence of Italian neorealism but avoids sentimentality and captures a culture in diaspora with honesty and insight. DVD extras include audio commentary by author Sherman Alexie and film critic/VL contributor Sean Axmaker; four short documentaries by Mackenzie, including one on the now-vanished neighborhood of Bunker Hill; two more pieces on Bunker Hill; White Fawn's Devotion, the earliest Indian short made in America; and radio interviews with Alexie and Charles Burnett (director of Killer of Sheep). A bonus DVD-ROM disc includes downloadable PDF files of materials on The Exiles and other projects planned but never completed by Mackenzie. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. (F. Swietek)