’Red Fever’: Hot Docs Review

Dirs: Neil Diamond, Catherine Bainbridge. Canada. 2024. 104mins

Following up their 2009 Peabody Award-winning documentary Reel Injun, which studied Hollywood’s usually bigoted portrayal of Native People, Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond and co-director Catherine Bainbridge now undertake a breezy however earnest exploration of the myriad methods Indigenous societies have formed the trendy world, from up to date style to democracy itself. 

A feel-good vibe that seeks to tell somewhat than scold or disgrace

Premiering at Sizzling Docs, this Indigenous Canadian manufacturing is a commendable instructional device that might be proven in school rooms in addition to additional documentary festivals. Diamond (to not be confused with the American singer-songwriter) serves as Pink Fever’s on-screen information, and his charming presence provides to the movie’s enchantment. At a time when Killers Of The Flower Moon has helped make clear the cruelty Native People confronted within the twentieth century, Pink Fever must be warmly embraced.

Early on in Pink Fever, Diamond ponders the world’s infinite curiosity in Indigenous tradition, regardless of its inhabitants’ constant makes an attempt to destroy and dehumanise Native Peoples. “There’s a deeper story about why the world is fascinated with us,” he says in voiceover, “and the way profoundly we’ve influenced them.” To discover this, the movie is divided into 4 sections, every of them concentrating on one facet of Indigenous affect: style, sports activities, politics and the planet.

Travelling from Canada to the US and Europe, Diamond interviews students, writers and artists, highlighting the underappreciated influence that Indigenous Peoples have had on those that conquered their lands. Whether or not by the identify of a baseball crew or the blatant appropriation of Indigenous fashion on the catwalk, these influences are in all places – hardly ever with a thought for the Native cultures that spawned them.

As an expression of Indigenous satisfaction, Pink Fever radiates a feel-good vibe that seeks to tell somewhat than scold or disgrace. Diamond usually sidesteps his comprehensible anger, though the movie is clear-eyed in regards to the evil of appropriation — illustrating, as an illustration, how clothes designers’ scavenging of Native fashions is much extra insidious than easy inventive theft. As Indigenous designers clarify, this ‘borrowing’ reinforces the notion that Native cultures can merely be plundered with out consequence, additional minimising individuals who have already been systematically marginalised by Europeans who colonised North America centuries earlier. 

The documentary can sometimes really feel unfocused, however Diamond and Bainbridge’s digressions have benefit. Throughout a dialogue of Jim Thorpe, a unprecedented Native American athlete of the twentieth century, Pink Fever additionally recognises the Carlisle Indian Industrial College, the boarding college Thorpe attended whose champion American Soccer crew invented most of the revolutionary trick performs that are actually commonplace within the sport.

Tellingly, the movie prefers to dwell on Indigenous athletic achievements somewhat than spend an excessive amount of time on the gross stereotypes perpetuated by sports activities groups which have caricatured Native American iconography for his or her mascots and logos. (That stated, Diamond’s silent disdain whereas being surrounded by white followers of the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs, who crudely imitate Indigenous rituals when their crew is doing nicely, speaks volumes.)

Maybe most fascinating is Pink Fever’s part on politics, which investigates how each the Enlightenment and the forming of the US drew inspiration from Indigenous Peoples’ harmonious governments. As one speaking head notes, there’s a bitter irony to the truth that, when Europeans colonised North America, their governments had been far much less superior than these of the folks they considered as unsophisticated savages. This vanity serves as a sobering theme all through Pink Fever, which observes the fixed tendency of outsiders to dismiss Indigenous life whereas stealing or corrupting the tradition’s foundational features. 

However the filmmakers, embodied by Diamond’s pleasant manner, select resilience over bitterness. And the documentary does present encouraging indicators of progress — comparable to style homes now collaborating with Indigenous artists when dreaming up their newest clothes traces — whereas emphasising simply how current Native Peoples are in at the moment’s society. In its humble manner, Pink Fever is an act of defiance, a press release of visibility from cultures that had been threatened with erasure however are rising extra highly effective in reclaiming a few of what has been taken from them.