Here’s something that the San Francisco tour guides probably don’t tell you.

In 1969 American Indians occupied Alcatraz Island, beginning the American Indian activist movement. Forty years later, one of the original activists seeks to reignite the movement by putting the political symbol of the occupation, the tipi, back on the island. He looks to his children for support. Now adults, and engaged in their own struggle for survival, his children question the real benefits of the movement and its costs to their family. Forty Winters is a story about the idealism and the aftermath of the American Indian movement as told through one family’s struggle for cultural identity and survival.

“Forty Winters” is an effort by digital filmmaker Valarie Bluebird Jernigan; a graduate of the SFSDF One-Year Digital Filmmaking Program. The strength of her work convinced well-known digital filmmaker Chris Eyre to sign on as Executive Producer and she has already seen some positive steps forward regarding distribution.

“I’ve just finished submitting grants to Kellogg Foundation, CA Council of Humanities, and Native American Public Television and we’ve gotten broadcast letters of interest from KQED and NAPT.

And my shorter film, the relocation film which I retitled “A New Frontier”, was accepted to the 34th Annual American Indian Film Festival, said Jernigan.

Catch “A New Frontier” at the 34th Annual American Indian Film Festival next week in San Francisco, November 6 – 14th.