'Damsel,’ ‘Woman Walks Ahead’ & More Westerns Being Led By Females, Native Americans | THR News - video Dailymotion

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Several new Westerns are being released or have been released this month, with the latest takes on the popular genre moving away from the typical white male heroes and from the habit of objectifying women and marginalizing Native American characters.

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00:00Several new westerns are being released or have been released this month, with the latest

00:03takes on the popular genre moving away from the typical white male heroes and from the

00:08habit of objectifying women and marginalizing Native American characters. In June, multiple

00:13socially progressive titles arrive on the big and small screens, including Paramount Network's

00:18Yellowstone on June 20. The film features native actors like Gil Birmingham and Takala Black Elk

00:23in central roles opposite Kevin Costner in a story of a reservation challenging a powerful

00:28Wyoming landowner. In theaters now, on a limited release is Nathan and David Zellner's offbeat

00:33comedy Damsel, which subverts the damsel in distress narrative on the plains with comedic

00:37results. Woman Walks Ahead, which lands on June 29, dramatizes the true story of painter

00:42Catherine Weldon's journey to paint a portrait of punk pap Lakota chief sitting bull with whom

00:46she becomes friends. Susanna White, director of Woman Walks Ahead, notes that the genre had

00:51typically been a man's world. Today, she says,

00:58Currently in development,

01:03a make-ready project starring Charlie Hunnam is set to center on a mixed-race warrior.

01:08Empire of the Summer Moon will see Blue Valentine's Derek C. in France co-write and direct a film on

01:13Comanche chief Quanah Parker.

01:15There's been somewhat of a renaissance with opportunities for Native American actors and their

01:19portrayals recently, says Yellowstone actor Birmingham, who has appeared in two other modern

01:24Westerns written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, 2016's Hell or High Water and 2017's Wind River.

01:31There's now a tide that wants to be more realistic of what the native culture consists of.

01:35In recent years, select Westerns had begun diversifying the genre's cast of heroes. 2017's

01:40Netflix limited series Godless portrayed a Western town run by women, while Scott Cooper's

01:45hostiles grappled with 19th-century racism, and the second season of HBO's Westworld put a

01:49spotlight on Zahn McLaren's Ghost Nation leader.

01:52Westerns that do away with some of the genre's tropes and archetypes are becoming more and more

01:56frequent. After Quentin Tarantino and the Coen brothers repopularized the genre starting in the 2010s,

02:02old Western projects with progressive messages are now seeing the light of day.

02:06Woman Walks Ahead, written by Steve Knight, was originally developed 14 years ago by producer Ed Zwick,

02:11and Godless creator Scott Frank says he began pitching the limited series as a film back in 2004.

02:17The genre was a tough sell as a feature, Frank says, due to the adage that Westerns don't sell overseas.

02:22A few years later, Netflix was explicitly seeking out Western projects and literally overnight it came

02:27together. The foregrounding of more diverse characters hasn't shielded today's Westerns from

02:32criticisms of Hollywood whitewashing and cultural appropriation. Prominent native actor Adam Beach,

02:37for instance, called for a boycott of Yellowstone last year when the reported Cherokee heritage of

02:41an actress playing one native character was called into question. And among today's title,

02:46there are few Native Americans playing major behind-the-scenes roles, something which

02:49Frozen River producer and Native American cinema advocate Heather Ray is working to change.

02:54Why couldn't there be an entire track of Westerns created by native content creators that begins

02:59to confront those classic storylines and stereotypes that challenges those typical kinds of tropes?

03:04asks Ray. It seems to me that it's time for us to really disrupt the genre and start to see

03:08things differently. Birmingham, meanwhile, is more patient with the direction of the industry,

03:12noting that Hollywood continues to make slow progress on representation.

03:16You might not be able to create change as fast as you would like, he says. If you can find an

03:20advocate or an ally that can help facilitate that, respect it. On Woman Walks Ahead, White,

03:25who spent time in the Lakota community before filming, says she felt a responsibility to empower

03:31filmmakers from the community. She hired Lakota community members for her crew and former Sundance

03:36Institute Native filmmaker Lab Fellow Willie White as her assistant.

03:40I wanted to have him shadow me so that in the future, he could go out and tell those stories, she says.

03:44To read more on this story, head to THR.com. For The Hollywood Reporter News, I'm Lindsay Rodriguez.

'Damsel,’ ‘Woman Walks Ahead’ & More Westerns Being Led By Females, Native Americans | THR News

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