Summer Sun Winter Moon

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Blackfeet Poet Darrell Robes Kipp in Montana

Official Selection of the 2007 IFP Market - Spotlight on Documentaries

An illume production
Produced and Directed by Hugo Perez
Executive Produced by Cynthia Newport

Synopsis
The creation of a symphony inspired by the Lewis and Clark expedition brings together two men: an innovative composer trying to breathe new life into classical music and a Blackfeet Indian writer fighting to save the Blackfeet language from extinction. Through an artistic collaboration that addresses issues of historical revision and cultural appropriation, they hope to forge a work of art that can better bridge the cultural divide between American Indians and the rest of America. Summer Sun, Winter Moon is a one-hour documentary that will tell the story of how these two very different individuals overcome their own personal challenges to create the symphony. The program is being produced for an intended broadcast on public television in 2008.

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Treatment
Headlines across the country read: “Florida Philharmonic Files for Bankruptcy”, “Hard Times for Pittsburgh Symphony”, “Toronto Symphony in Peril”, “St Louis Symphony in Crisis.” Celebrated Composer Rob Kapilow reflects on these headlines, “Nobody wants to talk about it but symphony orchestras across the country are dying. Audiences are aging. Younger audiences are staying away in droves.” Kapilow doesn’t think that audiences are truly listening to what they are hearing anymore. He feels classical music has become meaningless to most audience members except as a badge of cultural sophistication. At a time when interest in classical music, for all intents and purposes, is flat-lining, Kapilow is trying to find ways of breathing new life into symphonic music by engaging audiences through innovative and often eclectic projects.

Darrell Robes Kipp is a Blackfeet poet and educator who was raised to believe that those who stayed on the reservation were failures. After graduating Harvard and developing a successful career for himself, he discovered that the ‘feeling of self-banishment’ he felt could only be overcome by returning to the Blackfeet reservation and rejoining his culture. While educated and able to participate in the ‘white man’s’ world, Kipp still feels a sense of anger at the history of the destruction of his people and a sense of frustration at the obstacles that American Indians still face today. Kipp works to keep the Blackfeet language and culture alive through the Piegan Institute, a Blackfeet language immersion school he founded on the reservation.

In 2002, Kapilow was commissioned by the Kansas City Symphony, the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, and the Louisiana Philharmonic to write a symphony inspired by Lewis and Clark. Initially intending to set the journals of Lewis and Clark to music, Kapilow becomes excited by the idea of turning the project on its head and creating a symphony that tells the American Indian side of the Lewis and Clark expedition. On his first trip out West, at Rob’s very first encounter with tribal representatives, he is told, “We don’t want outside people telling our stories, we want to tell our own stories. The very thing that he aspires to do is exactly the thing that American Indians apparently do not want him to do. How will Kapilow resolve this conflict?

At this juncture, Kapilow meets Kipp at the Piegan Institute on the Blackfeet reservation at the foot of the Rocky mountains in Northwestern Montana. Kipp is rehearsing his young Blackfeet students who are preparing a play that tells the Blackfeet version of an encounter in which Captain Lewis shot and killed two unarmed Blackfeet boys. Moved by his visit with Kipp and the students at the Piegan Institute, Kapilow asks Kipp to write the libretto for his symphony. Despite the fact that ‘he could care less about Lewis and Clark’, Kipp agrees because he sees the symphony as a way to promote the American Indian side of history, ‘to use Lewis and Clark’ to promote his own agenda.

The documentary will follow the creation of the symphony through to its premiere at the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra when Darrell will get to see his words performed by a symphony for the first time and Rob will learn whether his unconventional approach to composing classical music will actually draw new audiences in and engage them in fresh ways. In the face of the monolith of contemporary mass popular culture as well as the challenge of bridging the divide between American Indians and other Americans, can Kapilow and Kipp’s efforts really change anything?