Hollywood News Now: Cherokee Nation Opens First Tribally Operated Film School: ‘We Need More Native Americans Working at Every Level of This Industry’

The Cherokee Nation has unveiled plans to open the first tribally operated film education program: The Cherokee Film Institute.

Launched through its filmmaking arm Cherokee Film, CFI is a 120-hour program designed to educate aspiring filmmakers in below-the-line production in hopes of bolstering the entertainment workforce within the Cherokee Nation and across its home state of Oklahoma. Although CFI was primarily created to help Native Americans pursue careers in entertainment, it's open to any person over 18.

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"We continue to illustrate that Native stories are best told by those with authentic perspectives. Empowering a talented Native workforce is essential to ensuring Native Americans are seen, heard and respected within this growing industry," said Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr., Cherokee Nation Principal. "This is more than a place of learning; it is a place of empowerment and a solution to a problem. Native misrepresentation stops here."

With classes set to begin in January 2025, Jennifer Loren, senior director of Cherokee Film, sat down with Variety to discuss the creation of CFI and its bright future in the Oklahoman film industry.

You worked as a journalist and news anchor for many years. How did you transition to filmmaking and eventually become senior director of Cherokee Film?

I was an investigative journalist doing long form, and the Cherokee Nation came, they knew I was a citizen of the tribe, and said, "We want to start telling our story ourselves. Can you help us put together some sort of content, produce it and host it?" So of course, I said yes. It was like a dream job opportunity. We created a docuseries called "Osiyo: Voices of the Cherokee People," which I'm still executive producer and host of. At the same time, Oklahoma had a growing film industry. We wanted to help provide infrastructure, support and jobs in that industry because it is a great vehicle for telling our stories, not only Cherokee stories but stories from this region. So we launched the Cherokee Nation Film Office at Sundance in 2018.

After we launched the Cherokee Nation Film Office, the demand still kept growing, so eventually we rebranded to Cherokee Film. We have four branches: Cherokee Film Productions, where we produce our own content, Cherokee Film Commission, which has our rebate program and our directories, Cherokee Film Studios, which is our sound stages, and then the Cherokee Film Institute. CFI is that piece you always need to build a film industry, the workforce component. We wanted to create a place where Native Americans had a workforce development entity where they would feel safe and where they would be able to learn how to get their foot in the door to this industry.

How did the idea for Cherokee Film Institute begin?

I had a phone call a few years ago with a major studio and they said, "Hey, we're creating this Native American project. We need a Native American showrunner who has all of this experience and can take over this huge project." I could count them on one hand and they are all busy. We haven't been given a seat at the table, and now we're expected to have all these professionals ready to take those seats that are now being offered, which is a great problem to have. However, we have to train people to get to that level. You have to start somewhere, get your foot in the door, learn how to work in this industry, see if you like it, and then we can help people progress in their careers. But it was really that need. We needed to find professionals and productions coming to the Cherokee Nation also needed professionals. But the bottom line is we need more Native Americans working at every level of this industry.

How is CFI funded?

The funding is completely provided by the Cherokee Nation and its business arm, Cherokee Nation Businesses. However, we are talking with some studio partners and looking for external partnerships to help us with CFI. And it could be any partnerships that provide us with expertise, professionals, equipment, all those sorts of things. But we were totally funded to start CFI with tribal funding.

How did you start planning the program once CFI was given the green light?

We began working with a consulting group (Content Talent South) that developed the Georgia Film Academy, and they were able to look at the best practices from the Georgia model and bring those over to us. It's not apples to apples, but we took the things that worked well and brought them into the Cherokee Film Institute. Things that needed to be done differently, we were able to tweak. We're still working on who's going to be teaching the classes, that's our next step. But we have subject matter experts developing the curriculum.

As of right now, CFI is entirely geared toward below the line production. What was the process for designing the curriculum?

As I said, the film industry in Oklahoma is growing and we have external production companies and studios bringing their projects into Oklahoma. So we looked at where the need was across all of the past projects that filmed in our area, specifically in Cherokee Nation, and talked to those line producers and said, "Okay, where are we a little bit shallow in our crew depth?" We took all of that data and came up with our first five curriculum areas. Those are all below the line. But we're also looking to educate for above-the-line as well. We need producers and writers and directors and all of that. But we're starting pretty small, seeing what the demand is and then we'll start adding additional courses from there. One of the courses that we're definitely going to be adding is virtual production. We have our own virtual production soundstage, so that's going to be something we're looking to do next.

Classes are set to start in January. What is your hope for the first batch of graduates?

I hope they make relationships with people through the Institute and the internship program after that, and immediately find work and start becoming a regular part of a film set here in Oklahoma, or elsewhere. [I hope graduates] take what they've learned at Cherokee Film Institute, which includes how to operate respectfully on a film set in Indian country, and take that knowledge and teach it to other people.

With the four branches of Cherokee Film complete for now, what are the next steps for expansion?

We have a lot of really exciting things happening at Cherokee Film. We're doing our own animations, we're working on dubbing content in the Cherokee language and we are working on feature-length documentaries. The most exciting endeavor, I think, is that we're starting to develop and finance our own film and television projects. Hopefully, once we really get moving with all these pieces, at our sound stages you'll have movies being made with native content, native cast and native crew using our rebates that will find major distribution. And we can say, "It was filmed at Cherokee Film Studios using interns from Cherokee Film Institute and cast and crew from Cherokee Film Commission's directories." That's the dream.

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