Powwow Highway

Powwow Highway (1989)

Two Northern Cheyenne men take a road trip from Montana to New Mexico to bail out the sister of one of them who has been framed and arrested in Santa Fe. On the way, they begin to reconnect to their spiritual heritage.

Date of release
1989-02-24
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (29)
Runtime
1h 31m
Genres
Drama, Comedy
Director
Jonathan Wacks

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Filmed in: New Mexico
  • Awards: 1 · Nominations: 0. Including: Sundance Filmmaker Trophy Dramatic

Powwow Highway is a 1988 American independent comedy-drama film directed by Jonathan Wacks and executive produced by George Harrison's HandMade Films. Based on the novel of the same name by David Seals, it stars A Martinez, Gary Farmer, Joanelle Romero and Amanda Wyss. Wes Studi and Graham Greene, who were relatively unknown actors at the time, have small supporting roles.

Production

The film was based on a 1979 novel by David Seals, who claimed descent from the Huron tribe. He sold the rights for $10,000.

Finance came from HandMade Films. George Harrison said he agreed to make it because he was interested in the downtrodden and underprivileged, he "spent some time in India with the Indian-Indians" and "enough people [at Handmade] like the script. It had a lot of heart."

The director was South African born Jonathan Wacks who lived in England and studied at UCLA. He said he was attracted to the story because "it said something about the political activist movement of the 1960s and how it went away. The character of Buddy intrigued me because he hadn't gone away he was still fighting for his cause."

Filming took place in October–November 1987. It was done on location on Native American reservations in Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota, and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Native Americans were upset at filming on top of a sacred site, a South Dakota butte, so the unit moved to Wyoming.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended