Dislocation Blues (2017 | 17 min.)
Sky Hopinka

Dislocation Blues sketches a loose and highly personal reflection on the Standing Rock protest in North Dakota—a historic gathering of Indigenous communities and allies that stood in solidarity to resist the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016–17. Anchored in the voices of participants Terry Running Wild and Cleo Keahna, the films draws in contemporaneous and retrospective thoughts on what participation in this diverse community felt like and meant. Hopinka’s Standing Rock is a movement, a love, loss, witnessed as come and gone by its participants. “Finding others that are just as alone as you are makes navigating…post-colonial America that much easier to bear.” - Sky Hopinka

Sky Hopinka is a Ho-Chunk Nation national and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Native Americans. He received his BA from Portland State University in Liberal Arts and his MFA in Film, Video, Animation and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. His work focuses on positions of homeland and landscape, designs of language and culture. Hopinka has won prizes at various festivals, including the jury prize at Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker in Ann Arbor and the More with Less Award at the 2016 Images Festival.