Screening: The Silent Enemy / An EVENING @ THE BARN

In the tradition of Robert Flaherty and “Nanook of the North,” “The Silent Enemy” powerfully dramatizes a winter of famine as experienced by a tribe of Ojibway Indians. Producers W. Douglas Burden and William C. Chanler with director H.P. Carver assembled a cast of almost entirely indigenous people, and dedicated themselves to authenticity in the smallest details. Filming in northern Canada under severe winter conditions, the cast and crew lived in teepees and built all the hunting equipment and other tools seen in the film.During a terrible famine in the dead of winter, Chief Yellow Robe (Chauncey Yellow Robe) must decide whether the tribe will have to endure great hardship by migrating north to find caribou. Baluk (Chief Buffalo Child Long Lance), a young hunter, urges him to begin the trek, but Dagwan, the corrupt medicine man (Chief Akawanush), who wants to undermine Baluk’s relationship with Chief Yellow Robe’s daughter (Mary Alice Nelson…