April 25, 2025 at 6:00 PM PT

Sky Hopinka Shorts: a proposition of memory

TRT: 86 min

Critically acclaimed, multi-hyphenate artist Sky Hopinka’s work is an ever-evolving, multifaceted exploration of the process of remembrance as one moves…
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Guests Expected
Director Sky Hopinka is expected to attend for a post-screening Q&A.
Dislocation Blues
Directed by Sky Hopinka 2017 | Short Film | 17
An incomplete and imperfect portrait of reflections from Standing Rock. Cleo Keahna recounts his experiences entering, being at, and leaving the camp and the difficulties and the reluctance in looking back with a clear and critical eye[...]

Dislocation Blues

Fainting Spells
Directed by Sky Hopinka 2018 | Short Film | 11
Told through recollections of youth, learning, lore, and departure, this is an imagined myth for the Xąwįska, or the Indian Pipe Plant - used by the Ho-Chunk to revive those who have fainted.

Fainting Spells

Just a Soul Responding
Directed by Sky Hopinka 2023 | Short Film | 16
This is a travelogue of sorts, as two friends whose lives intersect and diverge, look at the road and the vessels we use as means to traverse landscapes both contemporary and historical, and of the spirit and of the body[...]

Just a Soul Responding

Kicking the Clouds
Directed by Sky Hopinka 2021 | Short Film | 16
This film is a reflection on descendants and ancestors, guided by a 50 year old audio recording of my grandmother learning the Pechanga language from her mother. After being given this tape by my mother, I interviewed her and asked about it[...]

Kicking the Clouds

Kunįkaga Remember Red Banks, Kunįkaga Remembers the Welcoming Song
Directed by Sky Hopinka 2014 | Short Film | 10
The video traverses the history and the memory of a place shared by both the Hočąk and the settler. Red Banks, a pre-contact Hočąk village site near present day Green Bay, WI was also the site of Jean Nicolet’s landing, who in 1634 was the first European in present day Wisconsin[...]

Kunįkaga Remember Red Banks, Kunįkaga Remembers the Welcoming Song

Lore
Directed by Sky Hopinka 2019 | Short Film | 11
Images of friends and landscapes are cut, fragmented, and reassembled on an overhead projector as hands guide their shape and construction in this film stemming from Hollis Frampton’s “Nostalgia”. The voice tells a story about a not too distant past, a not too distant ruin[...]

Lore

When you’re lost in the rain
Directed by Sky Hopinka 2018 | Short Film | 5
In this video, drawing from Bob Dylan's song "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," layers of experiences circling loss and longing are overlaid between images of landscapes and movement. In the song by Dylan, a stranger's listlessness and exhaustion are woven through and around Juarez, Mexico[...]

When you’re lost in the rain

Program Description

Critically acclaimed, multi-hyphenate artist Sky Hopinka’s work is an ever-evolving, multifaceted exploration of the process of remembrance as one moves through time and landscape. His propulsive, non-traditional films burst with kinetic visuals, each a layered art piece that challenges the positioning of Indigenous culture in American society. This collection of short films highlights Hopinka’s vibrant approach and restless intellect as he explores the intersection of spaces and individuals, the dislocation of centuries of erasure, the allure of home, and the power of language. Each is a capsule of recollection, reconstruction, and renewal. (All short film loglines provided by Sky Hopinka.) —Jessie Fairbanks