Het rode huis

A documentary on the Navaho indian tribe. They live in the Big Mountain territory in Arizona. This used to be, in the eyes of the white man, an unimporant piece of land, but since the sixties it has suddenly become important because of its uranium. The territory, which to the Navaho is holy, is literally being dug up from under their feet. Uranium mines, excavators, dirty water springs, humiliating fences and prohibition orders can be seen everywhere. Moreover, they are constantly threatened to move by force. Het Rode Huis illustrates this in an unusual way. The film makers have consciously employed the traditional documentary style with a narrator but have made the film fit in with the Navaho's way of thinking and speaking. The story, is as it were being told by the indians and through montage. The indian belief that life is a cycle, is the important point of departure during the montage of the film: life on earth is not a straight line, but a cycle. Images of the elements - earth, water, air and fire - which make a balanced life on earth possible, are not matched to a place or to a person. They constitute an independent part within the film; a part of the cycle. The same thing happened with the factor time. The indian culture knows no measurable aspect of time, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. This 'timelessness' is incorporated into the film by emphazising the principle of cycles: the film starts at sunrise, the awakening, and ends at sunset, the darkness. To emphazise that feeling, nightime was placed in the middle of film, dividing it into two days. This way an attempt has been made to match the composition and the rhythm of the montage with the rhythm of life on Big Mountain. (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam)