'GRAB' - A 2nd Award For Director, Billy Luther, At Sundance?

Native American Director Documents His Community
Submitted by Rudy Garcia –Tolson

Film director, Billy Luther, Is looking at the Sundance Film Festival – January 20-30, 2011- for a second chance for a documentary film award. His first award came with “Miss Navajo” (2005-2006, Crystal Frazier) which premiered at the 2007 Sundance Festival. His mother , the role model for the winning independent documentary, Sarah Ann Johnson Luther was Miss Navajo, 1966-67.

In his second time at Sundance, with “GRAB”, Luther gives audiences an intimate look inside one of his own Native American tribes, where cameras have never been allowed before. He is Navajo, Hopi and Laguna Pueblo.

Each year residents of the Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico honor individual family members by throwing food and gifts from the rooftops of their homes to the community that gathers below.
 

Photographing with great visual flair, Luther sculpts an emotional tribute to his community, a community that’s filled with abundant generosity and rooted in tradition. As the seconds tick away leading up to the moment of the “grab,” the arms of children reach to the sky to prepare for being showered with water, gifts, and blessings.

GRAB is an intimate portrait of the little-documented Grab Day in the villages of the Laguna Pueblo tribe, who annually throw water and food items from the rooftop of a home to people standing below.

A community-wide prayer of abundance, thanks, and renewal, Grab Day exists at the intersection of traditional Native and contemporary Western cultures. Luther’s film, which is narrated by Parker Posey, follows three families as they prepare for the annual event, chronicling their lives for the year leading up to this day.

With GRAB, Luther confirms his place as one of today’s most exciting filmmakers portraying the beauty of the modern Native American experience

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