Series Site
January 10–February 28, 2025
The genre-defining opening scene of countless Westerns—an ultrawide shot that reveals an expanse of land so vast that the actors, riding on horseback, seem to inch along the horizon like tiny ants in a tunnel—establishes that the true protagonist is not the cowboy, bounty hunter, or outlaw, but the land itself. This distinctive narrative approach contributed to a cinematic language adaptable to landscapes far beyond the American frontier.
In Westerns, land becomes a powerful symbol, embodying both promise and peril, scarcity and wealth. More than just a backdrop, it has a spiritual dimension, imbued with myth and elemental significance, containing dark colonial histories and a fundamental connection with Indigenous Americans through their ancestral territories.
In John Ford’s The Searchers, the iconic Monument Valley casts an imposing presence over the unfolding narrative of colonial violence against the Comanche on the American frontier. Here the landscape transcends its role as a mere setting; it is a spirited character, timeless and expansive, standing as a monument to feminine power in a narrative world persistently striving for remasculinization. This film series provides an opportunity to consider The Searchers alongside the diverse selection of Westerns that have been made since.
These films—including works by directors Charles Burnett, Kevin Jerome Everson, and Kelly Reichardt—offer intergenerational, anti-colonial, and transnational perspectives on the Western genre. The series is bookended by Zacharias Kunuk’s Maliglutit (Searchers), an Inuit reclamation of the revenge Western set against the frigid expanse of the Arctic that reimagines the genre within which Indigenous voices have historically been marginalized.
—Leila Weefur, Guest Curator