The Exiles (1961 film)
| The Exiles | |
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| Directed by | Kent Mackenzie |
| Produced by | Kent Mackenzie |
| Written by | Kent Mackenzie |
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72 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
The Exiles (1961) is a film by Kent MacKenzie chronicling a day in the life of a group of twenty-something Native Americans who left reservation life in the 1950s to live in the district of Bunker Hill, Los Angeles, California. Bunker Hill was then a blighted residential locality of decayed Victorian mansions, sometimes featured in the writings of Raymond Chandler, John Fante, and Charles Bukowski. The structure of the film is that of a narrative feature, the script pieced together from interviews with the documentary subjects. The film features Yvonne Williams, Homer Nish, and Tommy Reynolds.
Filming was done in 1958. The film features rock and roll music composed for the film and performed by The Revels. The cast of American Indian actors are notable for their lack of self-consciousness as they drink and socialize during a night out on the town ending in a 49 party of drumming and dancing on "Hill X" overlooking downtown LA.
The Exiles premiered at the 1961 Venice Film Festival. As it was only licensed 16mm version to schools and churches, it did not find a distributor to release it theatrically in that year, and so over the years it fell into obscurity, known to cinephiles but remaining largely unseen by the public. A restored version produced by the UCLA Film and Television Archive premiered at the Berlin Film Festival in February 2008, and Milestone Films released it commercially and on DVD in summer 2008.
In 2009, it was named to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being "culturally, historically or aesthetically" significant and will be preserved for all time.
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