Kicking the Clouds (2021, 15 min)

Kicking the Clouds, which recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, centers around a 50 year old audio recording of a Pechanga language lesson between the director’s grandmother and great-grandmother, and contextualized by an interview with his mother in his Pacific Northwest hometown. The film is a reflection on descendants and ancestors with language and nature to navigate.

Fainting Spells (2018, 11 min)

The dream-like Fainting Spells which consists of a near anarchistic mix of memories, poetry and folklore, tells of a journey through the spirit world with Xąwįska, or Indian Pipe Plant, used by Ho-Chunk people to revive those who have fainted. The film suggests a new myth about Xąwįska, which puts ideas about the spirit world in relation to the landscape and to daily life. With text in a cursive typeface floating across pictures of occult landscapes, the film anchors language in nature.

Dislocation Blues (2017, 17 min)

The short documentary focuses on the Dakota Access Pipeline protests that took place in 2017 at Standing Rock Indian Reservation. An oblique look at the intersection of trans and native representation, the movie features two interviews with people who reflect on their time in the camp: one with Terry Running Wild, who spoke from the protesters’ camp during the unrest that simmered for almost a year, and the other with the writer Cleo Keahna, who talked via Skype months after the demonstration had ended. For Keahna, who identifies as “two-spirit,” staying at Standing Rock’s Two-Spirit camp provided a break from both traditional Native and western gender roles.

wawa (2014, 6 min)

In wawa we meet Hopinka himself who in adulthood learns the dying language chinuk wawa, that he would later go on to teach others. By means of a rhythmic and eventually absurd language play, the film humorously suggests that mastering a tribal language is important in the experience of being an «authentic indigenous peoples». wawa is Hopinka's first film, and in many ways sets the stage for his continuous examination of language, identity and history.

Jáaji Approx (2015, 8 min)

Jáaji Approx composes a meeting between Sky and his deceased father through compilations of audio recordings of his father's voice with video recordings of landscapes from journeys they had both taken separately. The term jáaji means a direct address in his father's tribal language, Hočak.

Visions of an Island (2016, 15 min)

Visions of an Island is set in the Auleutian Islands in the Bering Sea, named after the indigenous people Auleuts. The film moves from cliffs and peaks, where uninhabited beaches meet power masts. A group of students and teachers play and invent games that revitalize their language and an Unangam Tunuu elder describes the landscape.

I’ll Remember You as You Were, not as What You’ll Become (2016, 13 min)

The program ends with I’ll Remember You as You Were, Not as What You’ll Become - an elegy to the late poet Diane Burns about mortality, reincarnation and the hope for a new beginning after resignation. Hopinka combines archival footage of Burns performing at the American Indian Community House in New York in 1996 and his own recordings of powwow dancers, hiding behind several layers of color filters and lights.