to call myself beloved

Here is a 2010 article about Sydney Freeland’s “Drunktown’s Finest” on teh occasion of her getting into the Sundance Screenwriting Lab. Her completed film has been confirmed as a Sundance Film Fest official entry, premiering in the NEXT section of the festival 2014.

Academy Alum Sydney Freeland scores Sundance Film honors

“Growing up on a Navajo reservation, I never saw anything on film that was like my experience,” says Sydney Freeland. Now, just three years after receiving an MFA in Motion Pictures & Television, she’s earned the kind of break most young filmmakers only dream about — the opportunity to attend the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.

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“It’s in the vein of Amores Perros or Traffic,” Freeland says. “The characters all have troubles that force them to interact with, and ultimately learn from, each other. I wanted to create something authentic to how I grew up,” says Freeland, a former Fulbright Scholar. “The films that I saw when I was young — Dances With Wolves, Smoke Signals — don’t really capture what life is like there. The people I grew up with weren’t the people I saw in those films.”

“Growing up on a Navajo reservation, I never saw anything on film that was like my experience,” says Sydney Freeland. Now, just three years after receiving an MFA in Motion Pictures & Television, she’s earned the kind of break most young filmmakers only dream about — the opportunity to attend the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.“Growing up on a Navajo reservation, I never saw anything on film that was like my experience,” says Sydney Freeland. Now, just three years after receiving an MFA in Motion Pictures & Television, she’s earned the kind of break most young filmmakers only dream about — the opportunity to attend the Sundance Screenwriters Lab.<A 

The film also grew out of a more gross misrepresentation of reservation life: “When I was about 8 or 9, the show 20/20 came to my hometown. They did a segment on my town called “Drunk-town, USA.” It’s a border town to the local reservation, and supposedly it had the highest rate of alcoholism in the country.” For Freeland, the show’s treatment of her town was a turning point. “That experience really stuck with me. My town has only 20,000 people, so when a film crew comes in, it’s a big deal. These people from the outside came in, and that’s really all they saw. If they had taken the time to look a bit deeper, they would have seen that there is a lot more going on. So Drunktown’s Finest came from this stereotype, this label. The title is personal for me.”

musings on July