Diné Kids Film Club is an Indigenous-led film community dedicated to promoting and exposing film and media literacy for young Indigenous adults. DKFC often highlights the horror genre as a vessel for creativity, deconstructing colonial storytelling and Indigenous language & cultural expression. DKFC is a way to work towards bringing public screenings of classic horror to the Rez, along with youth film workshops & panels, and giving young aspiring filmmakers access to world premieres, fellowship programs, and film festivals across the country.

With roots in Afro-Indigenous Futurism, horror can serve as a gateway to the “language of the future.” DKFC asks the Indigenous young adult community to deconstruct and analyze colonial structures and question the political spheres through the lens of the horror genre and language. Across twelve primary genres in 2023 and similar to 2022 reporting, horror comes as the third highest grossing genre at 12.8%, behind comedy at 20.2% and action at 27.5%, deeming it one of the most accessible genres to date (2024 Hollywood Diversity Report 11).

From The Indigenous Effect: Native People in Film, it is reported that “Native youth have some of the lowest high school graduation and college enrollment rates” with “serious psychological distress at 2.5 times the rate of the general population” (Giles). To bring more Indigenous filmmakers and scholars forth, DKFC invites writers, filmmakers, film experts, and co-collaborators of all backgrounds to give Indigenous youth the knowledge, language, and insight they’ve acquired from horror writing and filmmaking as the key to exploring diasporic storytelling through their own identities and culture at no charge.

We expect young Indigenous adult participants to find purpose and community created and established by Diné Kids Film Club and redefine “representation.”

Disclaimer: “Diné” refers to “the people” or the “five-fingered beings” in the Navajo language. The use of the “Diné” term/language is not to deter other Indigenous communities from joining the discourse, but to include and invite others from a place of humanity and the love for film.

Resources

Magazine, Smithsonian. “The Indigenous Effect: Native People in Film.” Smithsonian.Com, Smithsonian Institution, 21 Nov. 2023, www.smithsonianmag.com/blogs/national-museum-american-indian/2023/11/21/the-indigenous-effect-native-people-in-film/#:~:text=More%20than%20a%20barrier%20to,%2C%E2%80%9D%20Joey%20emphasized%20to%20me.

Staff, Communication and Marketing. “Native American Characters Are Nearly Invisible in Top Films.” Native American Characters Are Nearly Invisible in Top Films | USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, 17 Oct. 2023, annenberg.usc.edu/news/research-and-impact/native-american-characters-are-nearly-invisible-top-films.

Webteam. “Hollywood Diversity Report 2024, Part 2: Streaming.” UCLA Social Sciences Hollywood Diversity Report 2024 Part 2 Streaming Comments, 31 May 2024, socialsciences.ucla.edu/2024/05/31/hollywood-diversity-report-2024-part-2-streaming/.