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Kevin Willmott’s films never shy away from dark events in America’s past. His latest, premiering tonight, deals with atrocities that occurred here in Lawrence.

“The Only Good Indian” is based on the story of Native American boarding schools, where children kidnapped from their tribes were taken to be assimilated into white culture. The film was first shown at the Sundance Film Festival in January, and will open with a benefit premiere at Liberty Hall tonight at 7:05 p.m.

The film was directed and produced by Willmott, associate professor of film and media studies, with a crew of colleagues, students and recent graduates. He said he showed the film in Anchorage, Alaska, recently and was approached by a group of Native-American women after the movie.

“They had this look,” he said. “And they just come to you and shake your hand, and they just give you this look — they don’t say anything — they just give you this look, where they come up to you and just cry.”

He said he thought the women had most likely experienced the same kind of forced assimilation depicted in the film. One of the historic boarding schools, where native children were regularly beaten and abused, was located in Anchorage, Alaska, and was open into the 1970s.

Willmott shot the movie at locations throughout Kansas, including the Flint Hills, Cowtown Museum in Wichita and at the Watkins Museum in Lawrence.

The film tells the story of a fictional Native-American boy, played by Winterfox Frank, who flees one of the boarding schools in the early 1900s. Wes Studi, who has appeared in “Last of the Mohicans” and “Dancing with Wolves,” plays an Indian bounty hunter who has been through the boarding school assimilation system and is assigned to chase the escaped Native-American boy. The screenplay was written by Thomas Carmody, a Lawrence resident and 1982 graduate, who proposed the film to Willmott in 2007. Carmody used Haskell Indian Nations University, which once served as one of these boarding schools, as a model for the school in the film.

Matt Jacobson, who worked as director of photography on the project along with 2004 graduate Jeremy Osbern, said that 60 to 80 students and graduates had worked together on three of Willmott’s films and several smaller projects in the last 10 years. He said the crew had worked together so long that they had become extremely comfortable with each other.

“We have this communication,” he said. “We all know the same language. We all know how we all work together.”

Muriel Green, Pittsburg senior, said that life on a film set was hectic, but that the real-world experience was invaluable.

“It was really fast-paced and really professional,” she said. “When you’re actually on a movie set, you get to learn everything hands on.

Since premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, the film has received awards from the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco and the Cherokee International Film Festival, where it won best film, best director, and best actor for Wes Studi.

Willmott said the most challenging aspect of the film was to tell a painful story and still make it entertaining. He said he thought the task of the independent filmmaker was to take on social and political issues that mainstream films did not.

“The things that Hollywood won’t do — that’s what you should do in my opinion,” he said. “They won’t be political, they won’t deal with religion, they won’t deal with with race: They won’t deal with all the tough things in society.”

Tickets will cost $8 and half the proceeds will go to the KU Friends of Film to support future films, events and speakers within the department of Film and Media Studies.

— Edited by Megan Morriss

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