Film

Andrew Okpeaha MacLean

Initial PGF Award: Graduate Film Scholarship, 2004
Additional PGF Awards: 2009 Special Project Award

 Andrew Okpeaha MacLean is an Iñupiaq filmmaker born and raised in Alaska. His films include NATCHILIAĠNIAQTUGUK AAPAGALU (SEAL HUNTING WITH DAD), which had its premiere at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, was named one of the ten best short films at the festival by indiWire, and was selected to screen at the Museum of Modern Art in April, 2005. Other films include KINNAQ NIĠAQTUQTUAQ (THE SNARING MADMAN), which won best short film at the 2006 American Indian Film Festival, SUCH A PERFECT DAY, and WHEN THE SEASON IS GOOD: ARTISTS OF ARCTIC ALASKA, a full length documentary which was a featured screening in the 2007 Arctic Summer Series at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian and was acquired for broadcast by ARTE, European Public Television. His most recent film, SIKUMI (ON THE ICE) premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival where it won the Jury Prize in Short Filmmaking.

In his hometown of Barrow, Alaska, he co-founded the Iñupiat Theater, the first theater company in the country dedicated to performing entirely in the indigenous Iñupiaq language. He also served for three years as the Artistic

Director of Stickfigure Productions, a theater company based in Seattle.

He has traveled in North and South America, Europe and New Zealand, worked in Siberia as a biological research assistant and is a member of the Egasak whaling crew in Barrow. He is a recipient of the John H. Johnson Film Award, a 2004 Princess Grace Foundation Graduate Film Fellowship, the 2003-2004 Martin E. Segal prize, the 2007-2008 Clive Davis Award for Excellence in Music In Film, and the 2007-2008 Riese Award. He holds his MFA in film directing from New York University.

PRESS:

Anchorage Daily News – Feb. ‘05

http://www.adn.com/life/arts/story/6104182p-5985810c.html

Anchorage Daily News – Jan. ‘08

http://www.adn.com/rural/story/294554.html

Please visit the News section of this website, for an in-depth interview with Andrew- March, 2008

website: www.sikumifilm.net