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Beyond Fear: A Place for Grizzlies
TYPE: Documentary
GENRE: Documentary
STATUS: Pre-Production
LOGLINE
Humans and grizzlies have co-existed peacefully for millennia. Native Americans tell us why that's important and how it is done.
SYNOPSIS
"Beyond Fear: A Place for Grizzlies" explores Native Americans’ traditional historic, cultural, and spiritual relationships with grizzlies. Their experience provides rationale and context for grizzly reintroduction to North America’s last suitable habitats and can reassure fearful Americans that grizzlies and humans can peacefully co-exist-—as they have for millennia before European conquest.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT
RAIN previously directed "Not In Our Name," a short film about protecting the sacred grizzly bear, which was shared thousands of times online. His most recent project is "Somebody's Daughter," about murdered and missing Indigenous women. Producer Leslee Goodman’s first project, "Twisp: The Power of Community," won awards from Docs Without Borders, Impact Docs, Global Nonviolent Film, and other festivals. With DP Alex Robinson, "Beyond Fear" will inspire viewers to feel, think, and act on behalf of grizzlies, humans, and greater environmental wholeness—as understood and practiced by Native Americans for millennia.
KEY CREW
Leslee Goodman - Producer
Leslee is an emerging documentary filmmaker whose first project, "Twisp: The Power of Community," won official selection laurels from Docs Without Borders, Impact Docs, Utopia Film Festival, WRPN.tv’s Short, Tight, and Loose Global Film Festival, and WRPN.tv’s International Women’s Film Festival. Her purpose as a filmmaker is to share stories that help us understand each other, experience those things we have in common, and learn to appreciate the diversity that enriches us. She has also produced, directed, shot, and edited many short films for nonprofit and commercial clients. Two dozen were stories from Washington's back-to-back summers of devastating wildfires, which were used to raise several million dollars for the Okanogan County Long-Term Recovery Group.
Rain - Director
Rain is the executive director of the Global Indigenous Council and author of the Piikani Nation Treaty, the most-signed international treaty in history, which restored ESA protection to the grizzly bear and supports reintroduction of grizzly bears to their historic habitats on sovereign lands. Key to that victory was a short film Rain directed, Not In Our Name. Rain’s most recent film is Somebody’s Daughter, about the thousands of murdered and missing Indigenous wome, which has been called both “hauntingly beautiful and emotionally devastating.” He brings unparalleled knowledge about the importance of the grizzly bear to Turtle Island tribes.
Alex Robinson - Director of Photography
Alex has worked as a camera operator, director of photography, and drone pilot on projects that have taken him across Canada and the US. From his beginnings in corporate and sports production, Alex has continued to contribute his creative eye behind the camera to hundreds of hours of broadcast television—in genres ranging from documentary, to short film, to entertainment and pop culture shows. His work has been seen on CBC, Sportsnet, Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, The Cooking Channel, and more. With the Global Indigenous Council, he has lent his creative visual voice to issues of protections for the grizzly bear and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women epidemic. Their most recent film, Somebody’s Daughter, had its premiere at the Native American 2020 Presidential Forum in Las Vegas.
Georgina Lightning - Narrator
Georgina is a First Nations film director, screenwriter, and actress. Born in Edmonton, Alberta, she is an enrolled member of the Samson Cree Nation. In 2007 she was one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 25 New Faces of Independent Film and in 2010 was the recipient of the “White House Project Epic-Award for Emerging Artists.” With executive producer Audrey Martinez, Georgina co-founded Tribal Alliance Productions as a means to create opportunities for Native American, First Nations, and other Indigenous filmmakers. Lightning directed, wrote, and starred in the supernatural 2008 thriller film Older Than America, becoming the first North American Indigenous Woman to direct a major feature film that won several major awards at film festivals. An outspoken advocate for First Nations and Native American causes, Lightning’s work fosters a greater appreciation of the intrinsic value of North American Indigenous cultures, not only to Indigenous people themselves, but to society in general.
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