Bios for Gila River Festival Speakers
Godfrey Reggio is an inventor of a film style which creates poetic images of extraordinary emotional impact for audiences worldwide. Reggio is prominent in the film world for his QATSI trilogy, Koyaanisqatsi, Powaqqatsi, and Naqoyqatsi, essays of visual images and sound which chronicle the destructive impact of the modern world on the environment. Visitors, his newest film with composer Philip Glass and producer/associate director Jon Kane, is a “stunning, wordless portrait of modern life.”
Jack Loeffler is a New Mexico treasure, as his aural history projects have recorded sounds from the natural world, interviews with Native American elders, and traditional music of Native and Hispanic cultures. His “Thinking Like a Watershed” series explores the importance of perceiving watersheds as complete ecosystems, with humans just one species among many. He addresses the effects of damming wild rivers, the imposition of geopolitical boundaries and the error of perceiving water as a commodity to be turned into money. He illustrates diverse points of view from interviews of residents in the Colorado and Rio Grande watersheds, among others. Jack has written several books, including Thinking Like a Watershed.
Dr. Enrique Lamadrid is an acequia activist and scholar of traditional water management. He is a Professor of Spanish and Portuguese in the Language Department at the University of New Mexico. In addition, he is a literary folklorist, author, ethnomusicologist, and vocal performer of Inditas.
Dr. Rina Swentzell is an author and artist from the Tewa community of Santa Clara. She writes and lectures on the philosophical and cultural basis of the Pueblo world and its educational, artistic, and architectural expressions.
Victor Masayesva, a Hopi Independent filmmaker, has been at the forefront of experimental filmmaking in the Native American media community. He is a prominent advocate for the indigenous aesthetic from the international community. Masayesva lives in his native village and has a unique viewpoint on water in the desert and how we can meet our water needs without taking more than our fair share.
Steve Harris is a river runner, the owner of river outfitter Far Flung Adventures and the Executive Director of Rio Grande Restoration, a non-profit organization, established in 1994 to secure the river flows necessary to support restoration of the “great river”. The Rio Grande is vitally important to individuals and communities, yet it has been so over-developed as to cease to flow at certain times and places. Protective and restorative policies must be initiated at state and national levels, if we are to prevent continued ecological decline and socio-economic conflict along the Rio Grande.
Peter Bill is Professor of New Media at Western New Mexico University. With high powered professional quality DSLRs being handy to ever greater numbers of people, creating time-lapse films has become something of a movement. Peter Bill has been shooting timelapse films since living in Prague at the height of the Prague Spring of the 90’s. He moved into timelapse filmmaking as he was a plein aire painter, capturing the movement of light with his brush. Starting with super-8 film, and moving to digital means, Peter’s time-lapse films have exhibited internationally and won many awards.