Oneidas take spotlight at film festival In a frame from the film "A Day Out," actor Ernie Stevens III visits a county fair (submitted photo). Locally-made "A Day Out" is one of three Native American films showing tonight By Christopher Clough News-Chronicle Chris Powless might be getting in on the start of something big. That something is Native American movies. While there's long been appreciation among movie buffs for foreign films, and non-northern European countries such as Iran, China and India have made huge gains in acceptance among those aficionados for the past few years, Native American filmmaking has remained largely in the shadows. But the genre has been picking up steam since 1998, when "Smoke Signals," a "buddy film" directed by Chris Eyre about two young men who venture off the reservation for the first time in their lives, was released to critical acclaim. It won the Audience Award and Filmmakers' Trophy at the international Sundance Film Festival that year. Nearly three years later, a trio of films by and about the people of the Oneida Nation will be shown tonight in the next installment of the Green Bay Film Festival. Those films are "Bonnie Looksaway's Iron Art Wagon" by New Mexico filmmaker Bruce King about a female Indian artist on her way to a powwow; "On and Off the Res with Charlie Hill," an hourlong documentary about Hill, an Oneida Green Bay native and comedic writer and stand-up performer, that has been shown on Wisconsin Public Television and around the country; and "A Day Out," a short film by local Oneida Nation member Powless and Troy Perkins about a face-off between Oneida and white teens. Powless, a multimedia specialist for the tribe, and Perkins, a producer and director for Milwaukee company Mindpool Productions, had known each other since their student days at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh before coming together for this project. Powless said he helped produce it, find the Native American cast members, and helped Perkins with the accuracy of some of the dialogue. "It's about three young Native American boys who go to the county fair off the reservation," Powless said. "There they encounter four non-Indian boys. They're kinda in a hurry to get out, and one of the boys getting out of his car smashes the car door. Things kind of clash there. It gets heavy in the end, it's quite intense." He said shooting took just more than a week on the Oneida Reservation and in Weyauwega. Powless said the only real problem was the 1971 Chevy the Oneida boys were in wouldn't restart after it had been running, so some in-car shots were done while it was being towed. "We had a great crew from New York mixed with a crew from UW-Oshkosh," Powless said. "They donated most of their time. It was a real learning experience in the art of filmmaking." Powless acts in area plays and participates in a writers' group through the Oneida Nation Arts Program. He said he has some ideas for play and film projects, and thinks appreciation of native American works in these areas might just be around the corner. "Right now in the United States, it's in its infancy, after the huge success of 'Smoke Signals,'" Powless said. "But Canada has gone through the roof with Native American films. There's a lot of documentaries, we have a contemporary series that's shown on Canadian network TV. There's a lot of talented Native American people discovering film, video, TV, mass media as a way to tell their stories." He said he hoped the film would present a positive image of Native Americans, like "Smoke Signals" did in 1998. It has been screened at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison and at several festivals around the country. "Right now I would like to use the movie to break the stereotypes - the buckskin, the peace pipes, the moccasins," Powless said. "It's a contemporary story. It shows Native American boys just being regular young men. Actually, the ones who are stereotyped in the film are probably the white boys. One was pretty much a redneck. "The film speaks an awful lot to what youths are going through nowadays, whether Indian, non-Indian or whatever. It also deals with choices. The choices we make have a great effect on us whether we realize it or not." FYI The Green Bay Film Festival is showing three films by and about Native Americans: "A Day Out" by Troy Perkins and Chris Powless; "Bonnie Looksaway's Iron Art Wagon," by Bruce King; and "On and Off the Res with Charlie Hill," a documentary about the Oneida comedian. The program begins at 6:30 tonight in the auditorium of the Neville Public Museum, 210 Museum Place. Perkins and Powless will be on hand to discuss their work.