Sterlin Harjo, a young Oklahoma writer and film director, will screen his award-winning feature film, "Four Sheets to the Wind," Thursday [NOV. 29] at East Central University. The screening will begin at 6 p.m. in the Estep Multimedia Center, courtesy of ECU's Hayes Native American Studies Center.
"Four Sheets to the Wind," Harjo's first feature-length film, already has won several awards. It had its world premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival where one of the stars, Tamara Podemski, won the Special Jury Prize for Outstanding Performance.
The film was named the best dramatic feature at the Imaginenative Film Festival. It won the best director award for Harjo and the best actor award for Cody Lightning, who plays the title character, at the AIFI Film Festival.
The film follows a young Seminole-Creek as he tries to make sense of life. After discovering his father's body and choosing to fulfill his unorthodox wishes for burial, Cufe Smallhill goes to Tulsa and gets to know his sister Miri, her friends, her problems and her troubled relationship with her mother.
Harjo, who lives in Tulsa, has received the United States Artists Award and the Renew Media award for his work in short films. He is a Sundance Institute Annenberg Fellow and a 2006 Renew Media Fellow.
"Like its shy hero," said a review published in Variety, "'Four Sheets to the Wind' is so low-key it risks making little impression -- until you realize it (and he) has stealthily won viewer sympathy and affection."
Cinematical called it "a lovely tale about communication, family, forgiveness and 'something resembling love,' told through the story of a Native American family in small-town Oklahoma."
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