In \u201cJ\u00e1aji Approx.\u201d, filmmaker Sky Hopinka takes viewers on an abstract journey through places, time and a life.<\/p>\n
The seven-minute experimental film, which has already won a number of awards, combines breathtaking scenery, Ho-Chunk stories and music and an exploration of the bond between father and son.<\/p>\n
Hopinka, a filmmaker enrolled in graduate school in UW-Milwaukee\u2019s Peck School of the Arts, grew up in the Pacific Northwest, but wanted to re-engage with his father and his father\u2019s people in Wisconsin\u2019s Ho-Chunk Nation.<\/p>\n
Hopinka\u2019s parents divorced when he was a toddler. He maintained only occasional contact with his father, who traveled the pow wow circuit. Over 10 years, Hopinka taped their conversations, stories and songs.<\/p>\n
While attending Portland State University in Oregon, where he earned his bachelor\u2019s degree in liberal studies, Hopinka became interested in film as a way of storytelling. In his Native American cinema class, he asked if he could make a film rather than write a paper.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt opened up a lot of possibilities for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Reviving a language, recording a life An academic advisor from the Ho-Chunk Nation Higher Education Division suggested that Hopinka pursue his interest in film at UWM\u2019s Peck School of the Arts, located in the heart of the Ho-Chunk Nation. Hopinka found UWM and Milwaukee the perfect place study film, pursue his roots and learn his father\u2019s language. Only 70 or 80 fluent native speakers of Ho-Chunk are left, according to Hopinka, and he wanted to play a part in reviving the language. (He already spoke and had taught Chinuk Wawa, an indigenous language from the Pacific Northwest).<\/p>\n \u201cWisconsin and UWM offered access points into a broader culture I hadn\u2019t been part of in my youth,\u201d Hopinka said. \u201cI also wanted to explore my relationship with my father and the ways we interacted with each other through songs and stories.\u201d<\/p>\n The idea for the film, which takes its name from the Ho-Chunk word for father, came to him on a road trip from Wisconsin to Seattle, down through Portland and Los Angeles and south back to Wisconsin.<\/p>\n \u201cI realized my father and I probably drove through these same landscapes \u2013 30 years apart. I got out my camera and started shooting. That led me to putting the images I was gathering alongside the recordings I made of him. \u201d<\/p>\n The film recreates the father and son\u2019s separate journeys in poetic, stunning images of deserts, pine forests, rivers, roads and bridges, with the father\u2019s voice talking, telling stories and singing the old songs.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s like the relationship I have with my father is through these recordings and these landscapes,\u201d Hopinka explained. \u201cThe sounds and the sights make an approximation of the relationship between us and ways of trying to engage with one another.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cJ\u00e1aji Approx.\u201d placed third in the Media City Film Festival, and Hopinka was awarded a Princess Grace Foundation fellowship to finish his studies at UWM.<\/p>\n On Friday, Oct. 16, the film was scheduled to screen at the 16th<\/sup> annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, billed as the world\u2019s largest indigenous media arts festival.<\/p>\n Hopinka plans to work with the Wisconsin Ho-Chunk community and expand the film into a broader documentary exploring contemporary Ho-Chunk life. Eventually, he\u2019d like to become a teacher at an Indian college, while continuing to make films.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot being done already to preserve the language and the culture. I just want to contribute to that to the best of my abilities and the best way I know how.\u201d<\/p>\n By Kathy Quirk<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In \u201cJ\u00e1aji Approx.\u201d, filmmaker Sky Hopinka takes viewers on an abstract journey through places, time and a life. The seven-minute experimental film, which has already won a number of awards, combines breathtaking scenery, Ho-Chunk stories and music and an exploration of the bond between father and son. Hopinka, a filmmaker enrolled in graduate school in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","institution":[107],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-3016","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","hentry","institution-uw-milwaukee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/3016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=3016"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=3016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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