“Barking Water,” the latest film by Oklahoma filmmaker Sterlin Harjo, will be presented on Thursday, Nov. 5, at Rogers State University.
The film is sponsored by the RSU Fine Arts Film Series and the RSU Native American Student Association in celebration of Native American Heritage Month in November.
The film, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7 p.m. in the Will Rogers Auditorium on the RSU campus in Claremore.
The filmmaker, who is of Seminole/Creek background, will appear live to introduce the film.
Interested from an early age in visual art and film, Harjo studied painting at the University of Oklahoma before writing his first feature-length script. A native of Holdenville and current Tulsa resident, Harjo has studied screenwriting in OU’s Film and Video Studies Program and under the Sundance Institute’s Feature Film Program.
In 2004, Sundance Institute selected Harjo to receive an Annenberg Fellowship which provided support over a two-year period to facilitate the creation of his first feature project, “Four Sheets to the Wind,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2007.
Harjo has directed three short films, “Crooked Little Heart,” “They’re Playing His Song” and “Good Night Irene,” all of which have received worldwide film festival showings. His latest film, “Barking Water,” premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival and was the only American film selected for the 2009 Venice Festival.
In the film, Harjo takes viewers on a road trip through his own personal Oklahoma, which includes an eclectic mix of humanity. Irene and Frankie have a difficult past, but Frankie needs Irene to help him with one task. He needs to get out of the hospital and go home to his daughter and new grandbaby to make amends. Irene had been his one, true, on-again, off-again love until they parted ways for good. But to make up for the past, Irene agrees to help him in this trying time. With performances by Richard Ray Whitman as Frankie and Casey Camp-Horinek as Irene, this story takes viewers for a ride in the backseat of Frankie and Irene’s Indian car, listening to their past and the rhythmic soundtrack that sets the beat for a redemptive road journey.