Cowboys and 'Indianer'
by Natasha Senjanovic
(Eastside Week, Seattle, October 9,1996)

A Microsoft manager stages a provocative film showdown at the Speakeasy

When Jens Wazel was growing up in Schmölln, a small town in former East Germany, his favorite films were of a genre that might sound like an oxymoron to most people - East German Westerns. Filmed between 1966 and 1983, these Indianerfilme, as they were called, were adventure stories set in the 18th- and 19th-century American West, but different from their US counterparts in several ways: They starred Yugoslavian actors and Russian horses, were filmed in the mountains and plains of Eastern bloc countries, and portrayed Indians as "proud, spiritual , and cultured heroes." White Americans, on the other hand, says Wazel, a 30-year-old Microsoft product manager who is co-curating a four-day showing of two of the films (the "Wild East Goes West" Film Festival), were "power-hungry and insidious invaders."

The films were wildly popular. "These were more than just movies, they were part of a cult," explains Wazel. Even when the East German Communist Party disapproved of the films' fascination with western culture, a public outcry prevented the discontinuation of the series. "These were our heroes. When we played 'Cowboys and Indians', everybody wanted to be the good Indian, never the bad cowboy." "Wild East Goes West," to be held Friday through Monday at Seattle's Speakeasy Cafe, marks the first time any of the Indianerfilme have been seen outside of Eastern Europe.

Wazel first had the idea for the event during a trip home two years ago while watching one of the films with a friend, Sven Hecker. Wazel, who moved to the United States in 1991 to complete a graduate degree, had been struggling to explain his previous life in East Germany to his American friends. "I wished there was something I could pop into a VCR and show them - hey, that's us," he says. "That's what we did and how we were, and we had clothing and we weren't all in line for bread, and it wasn't so grim." The films seemed to be the answer, a way to give Americans a glimpse into East German popular culture, even though, ironically, that popular culture was about America itself.

The original idea was to present six subtitled films in 35mm format, but after initial efforts to find funding were unsuccessful, they scaled down to a two-film showing, and on video rather than on film. Wazel started looking for backers on the micro rather than macro level. He e-mailed some Microsoft co-workers for donations, and was surprised when more than 50 people reciprocated, eventually providing more than 15 percent of the project budget. Meanwhile, Hecker, a freelance radio journalist living in Berlin, and the other co-curator of the festival, used his media connections to secure an appearance of Gojko Mitic at the film festival. Mitic is the Yugoslavian-born actor who starred - as an Indian - in about a dozen Indianerfilme. The actor is a legend in East Germany: "Children were named after Mitic," says Wazel.

Once Mitic's involvement was confirmed, German television production company Hoferichter & Jacobs decided to provide the remaining funds and to produce a piece on Wazel and his project for its Mitmenschen (Fellow Citizens) program, a series of half-hour documentaries on various East Germans (the program will run next year.) The company even subtitled the Indianerfilme for free. "Now we really had to do it," jokes Wazel.

Although the event started out as a way for Wazel to share his movies "on a personal level," it has turned into a cultural and political forum of sorts, sparked by the fact that the Indianerfilme tell a story of settlers and Native Americans that is vastly different from that of traditional Hollywood Westerns. Opening night (which, coincidentally, happens to be Wazel's 31st birthday) will feature a post-film panel discussion between Mitic, Maureen Schwarz, a University of Washington professor who specializes in the popular culture media portrayal of Native Americans, and Richard Restoule, an elder of the Ojibway nation and local actor (he appeared regularly on Northern Exposure). "The project developed in a theoretical way when I realized the potential for it here, what hot buttons can be pushed by [the films]," says Wazel. Interest has been high enough that a fourth night was added after tickets for the first three nights quickly sold out.

The festival is opened by a Friday-night showing of Die Söhne der großen Bärin (Sons of the Great Bear). Filmed in 1965, Die Söhne (which also shows on Sunday) covers the late-19th-century conflicts between the tribes of the Western Dakota and the masses of new immigrants that moved to the area after the discovery of gold in the Black Hills and the completion of the transcontinental railroad. 1973's Apachen (Apache), which plays on Saturday and Monday, is set in 1846, on the eve of the American war with Mexico. It's the story of the young Mimbrenos-Apache warrior Ulzana (Mitic) who seeks revenge after his tribe is swindled out of its mineral rights and brutally attacked by the managers of a copper mining company. There are post-screening events each night, including Friday's discussion, live music from Bosnian folk group Kultur Shock on Saturday, and a video broadcast of Friday's discussion on the last two nights.

What makes the Indianerfilme even more unusual is their historical and cultural accuracy. While East German filmmakers had no resources to hire Native American actors, the films were painstakingly researched out of an earnest desire to realistically portray the lives and cultures of Native Americans during the 18th and 19th centuries. This fact was confirmed by Restoule after Wazel first showed the films to the elder. "I was kind of afraid. I thought, 'He's going to rip them apart,'" recalls Wazel. Restoule's complaints, however, focused on details: In one film, Chingachgook, loosely based on James Fenimore Cooper's The Deer Slayer, an actor wears a chain of grizzly claws in an area of the country where grizzlies had disappeared; in another Restoule noted the omission of symbols painted on some of the tipis.

With the overall portrayal of Native Americans, however, Restoule was impressed enough to spread the word about the film festival to others within the Native American community. In a gesture of appreciation towards Mitic, a non-Indian who built a successful career of portraying Indians without exploiting them, a pow-wow will be held in his honor.

The fact that most American filmmakers are not as accurate or truthful in portraying Native Americans than East Germans were 20 or 30 years ago is an irony not lost on Wazel. He brings up two recent examples: Dances with Wolves and Pocohontas, which have been criticized for their questionable portrayals of Native Americans.

Wazel reiterates several times, however, that he is no "missionary with a big agenda." His greatest goal now is "to make as much information available as I can and let people think about it and discuss it. Let people come to their own conclusions. I don't want to spare them that. And I don't want to say, 'You Americans never did it right.' Just look at Peckinpah."