Genre
Synopsis
THE HEART STAYS tells the story of Shannon (17) who after much family resistance travels thousands of miles away to attend college. Erin (15) is distraught at Shannon’s departure and begins to fail in school. Shannon has a difficult time adjusting to college life as she confronts and must learn to negotiate deep racial divides among both students and faculty. She also faces an age-old Native American plague – alcohol. Back on the reservation, Erin, fed up with her parents’ disapproval sneaks away from her home and falls in with unscrupulous band members. who force her to cross the reservation border and deliver drugs. After she delivers the drugs, Erin steals thousands of dollars in drug money. At college Shannon rejects alcohol, and with Liz, her new non-Native and Glen, a Native American friend is fighting an academic battle to save a Native American literature program and her full college scholarship. Suddenly in the midst of Shannon’s struggle, Erin arrives on campus begging for help to escape to Canada, where she can hide from dangerous drug dealers. Will Shannon stop everything to save her sister’s life? THE HEART STAYS illuminates how the choices each sister makes are intertwined with their acceptance or denial of Osage traditions and the embrace of family and friends.
Bio
Diane Fraher writes and directs narrative feature films about contemporary Native Americans. In her words, her films “explore the struggle of Native Americans to identify with traditional values within the context of modern society.” An enrolled Member of Osage Nation with documented Cherokee heritage as well, she is one of the artists who formed the New York Movement in Contemporary Native Arts, the only such Native American arts movement in the United States, outside of Santa Fe, NM. Her first feature-length narrative film, The Reawakening, was the first feature film written and directed by a Native woman and wholly produced by Native people. Ms. Fraher’s new feature film, The Heart Stays, is the first narrative film written, directed and produced by a Native American woman to receive distribution .
In 1987 Ms. Fraher founded American Indian Artists Inc., (AMERINDA) New York, NY, a Native community-based multi-arts organization. Amerinda is the only multidisciplinary arts organization of its kind in the United States providing programs and services to emerging and established Native American artists.
Diane Fraher has received numerous fellowships, individual artist grant awards and for her filmmaking including: a 2013 Fellow in Screenwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a 2019 Made in NY Womens Film Fund Fellowship for The Heart Stays.
Awards History
NY Women's Film Fund Award 2018
Credits
Actor - Irene Bedard
Actor - Jon Proudstar Dejan Georgevich ASC (Cinematographer)
