In the Land of the Head Hunters

In the Land of the Head Hunters
Kwagu'ł girl, Margaret Frank (née Wilson) was featured in Curtis's In the Land of the Head Hunters. Here she is shown in a portrait by Curtis wearing abalone shell earrings. Abalone shell earrings were a sign of the noble class.
Directed by	Edward S. Curtis
Written by	Edward S. Curtis
Starring	Maggie Frank
Cinematography	Edmund August Schwinke
Distributed by	World Film Company
Release date	December 7, 1914
Running time	65 min
Country	United States Canada
Language	silent film English intertitles

In the Land of the Head Hunters (also called In the Land of the War Canoes) is a 1914 silent film fictionalizing the world of the Kwakwaka'wakw peoples of the Queen Charlotte Strait region of the Central Coast of British Columbia, Canada, written and directed by Edward S. Curtis and acted entirely by Kwakwaka'wakw native people.

The film was selected in 1999 for preservation in the US National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant." It was the first feature-length film whose cast was composed entirely of Native North Americans; the second, eight years later, was Robert Flaherty's Nanook of the North. It was the first feature film made in British Columbia, and is the oldest surviving feature film made in Canada.

Curtis had earlier experimented with multimedia. In 1911 he created a stage show with slides, a lecture, and live musical accompaniment, called The Indian Picture Opera. He used stereopticon projectors, where two projectors dissolved back and forth between images. This was his prelude to entering the motion picture era.

The film opened in New York City and Seattle, Washington in December 1914, with live performances of a score by John J. Braham. Braham had access to wax cylinder recordings of Kwakwaka'wakw music, and the promotional campaign at the time suggested that his score was based on these; in fact, there were few snatches of Kwakwaka'wakw music in the score. Although critically praised, the film was a commercial failure.