BREAKING SILENCE THROUGH CINEMA

Ruchatneet Printup is bringing a new lens to the Tuscarora community.

Words by Jackson Barnes

Photos by Krystal Zhang

For a filmmaker, finding the right place to work comfortably is crucial, and Ruchatneet Printup “knew he was in the right place” at Syracuse Film. Having wrapped his thesis film over spring break, 55-year-old Printup, a VPA Film senior, is entering the final stint of his time at Syracuse.

Ruchatneet Printup is a member of the Tuscarora Nation and grew up very involved in his community. Some of his first callings in life weren’t film but rather theater and STEM.

“In high school, I had a big focus on theater and art, but also on maths and science. And, initially I went to RIT as a biomedical computing major, but I immediately knew I was on the wrong track.”

Printup explained that while drawn to the arts generally, he had not quite found a specific path, he decided to continue to pursue computing. He found that “it was just never the right time,” and “there was a lot going on in my community, which got me more involved with my culture.” Printup took a step back from the arts to focus on helping his community, with tasks like sourcing grants to fund language immersion programs. “I have been an advocate for my community retaining their indigenous language” Printup explains, after “five hundred years of genocide it is important for my own and other groups to hang on to their culture and ceremonies.”

This pressing work put a hiatus on his artistic pursuits, but he found his way back eventually.

His film career began in 2013 when he produced a documentary called “Unseen Tears,” which covered the Native American Boarding School system, the film followed indigenous children removed from their families and cultures, who were brutally reprogrammed to American culture. Printup described that this topic “hadn’t been covered much,” despite being a semirecent problem, since “we still had elders who had been sent there.” Working with these elders, Printup and the documentary helped uncover a dark and forgotten part of American history. The documentary won several awards and sold up to 1,300 copies.

This documentary opened new doors for Printup, and it was working on “Unseen Tears” that helped him get into Syracuse University in 2019. “I was looking to transition out of working for a non-profit, and I did a lot of meditating, and that meditating led me to realize ‘you could go to Syracuse University and become a film director.’”

His current journey in the film world has built upon his nonlinear path into film school.“Being a director is a hard role to have; you have to not only be managing your project but also managing people.” He described how “working in [his] community” helped him learn to manage a film set, seeing as how both give “practice working with large groups of people.”

Printup stands apart from other VPA class members since he started his film education at 55.

“I didn’t think I could have handled all of this at the standard college age,” he said. He needed time to figure out more about himself and his goals before starting this journey.

The time spent working in the Tuscarora community gave Printup a more developed drive to tell stories about his community. His sophomore thesis film, “Dreams Interrupted,” follows an indigenous college lacrosse player’s experiences after his mother’s death. This film was a starting point leading towards his senior thesis, “Smoke,” which follows a mother returning home from rehab and trying to balance her recovery from addiction with reuniting with her children.

“It feels vulnerable to do work that relates to where I’m from,” said Printup. “Being from a community environment, I often feel the urge to put the community before myself and become invisible, but I can’t do that and do the work that’s important to me.”

Printup shot “Smoke” over spring break of last year and, having pushed himself to handle a larger task and crew, brought a crew of about a dozen SU film students back to his community for a week to shoot this film. Shooting on location with two large crowd scenes — one with 30 extras and the other with 60 to 70 — Printup and his crew worked for five straight days, with each shoot running about 12 hours.

“With [Smoke], I wanted to push myself past the boundaries of what I could easily do with a few people because my goal is to direct feature films so I need these kinds of experiences,” he said.

Printup is a filmmaker with a clear determination to provide indigenous representation to the screen, something he feels is sorely missing. As a result, every film he writes includes the indigenous philosophy of his culture or comes directly from their stories. These philosophies include: “being caretakers to Mother Earth, the sense of community where the whole comes before the individual, generational elder wisdom, and the process of making decisions which shall not harm seven generations down the line.”

Printup also believes that, while films like Avatar received criticism from indigenous communities, their philosophies highlight issues such as the climate crisis. Seeing films like this as well-meaning steps in the right direction, Printup hopes to be part of the wave of indigenous filmmakers who can directly put their values and beliefs onto the screen.

“There’s definitely people looking for indigenous filmmakers, like elders and community leaders wanting informational videos made. Many communities feel safer working with an indigenous filmmaker [for this reason].”

Printup cares deeply about the relationship between film and indigenous communities. He said that, in his community, there is limited trust in the film industry.

“We’ve had experiences where films have come in, and we’ve had very little control over them,” he said. “Promises are made and then not delivered on.”

Even on set for “Smoke,” Printup had to establish clear guidelines and reporting chains to avoid any kind of possible issues. But despite the past, he is eternally pushing to see his community represented on the screen.

“Being an older filmmaker, I feel like my purpose for film might already be so refined, compared to someone younger,” he said.

Through Facebook, Printup sees many indigenous people across communities entering the film world. He also saw a surge after shows like “Reservation Dogs” turned the camera toward the indigenous experience. He believes that the show is the first big indigenous pop-culture success in America, which has helped elevate indigenous filmmakers.

Printup is currently in post-production on his senior thesis film, “Smoke,” with hopes that both it and his other film, “Dreams Interrupted,” will soon enter the festival circuit.

“Being in school has been a bit of a whirlwind, and I haven’t shown much of my work from Syracuse to my community,” he said, “but as school begins to wind down I hope to make some changes and release them.”