500 Nations

500 Nations

500 Nations
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VHS Tape Cover Information

Actor: Eric Schweig, Gordon Tootoosis, Gregory Harrison, Kevin Costner, Wes Studi
Producer: Kevin Costner
Producer: Bernd Eichinger
Producer: Heather Rae
Producer: Jack Leustig
Producer: Jim Wilson
Producer: John Pohl
Writer: John Pohl
Writer: W.T. Morgan
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Unknown), Analog; English (Original Language), Analog
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 376 minutes
Release Date: 1995-04-26
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Publisher: Warner Home Video
Studio: Warner Home Video

VHS Movie Reviews of 500 Nations

Movie Review: Brings History alive
Summary: 5 Stars

This documentary is so fantastic, I hardly knew that it was one. The photography is brilliant, and it is a well written factual film. It makes you feel what the Indians mush have felt at the injustices they suffered. 500 NationsKevin Costner did a fantastic job, as did the rest of the crew. I actually felt like I was on the Trail of TearsThe Trail of Tears: Cherokee Legacy, and at Wounded KneeBury My Heart at Wounded Knee. I now have a much deeper respect for my ancestors, well at least the Red ones.

Summary of 500 Nations

This eight part documentary on the indigenous people of the Americas starts from Pre-Columbian history and covers the arrival of and colonization by the Europeans through modern times. The series shows the full and rich civilizations that proliferated in ancient times, as well as the current efforts of Native Americans to preserve their cultures and traditions. 500 Nations presents information from a variety of sources via documents, photographs, eyewitness accounts and computer graphics. Educational and entertaining.
With six episodes spread out over four discs and a running time of well over six hours (in addition to an interactive CD-ROM filled with extra features), director-producer Jack Leustig's sprawling 500 Nations, a history of Indians in North America, is likely the most comprehensive effort of its kind ever undertaken.

Mention the word "Indian," and most will conjure up images inspired by myths and movies: teepees, headdresses, and war paint; Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Crazy Horse, and their battles (like Little Big Horn) with the U.S. Cavalry. Those stories of the so-called "horse nations" of the Great Plains are all here, but so is a great deal more. Using impressive computer imaging, photos, location film footage and breathtaking cinematography, interviews with present-day Indians, books and manuscripts, museum artifacts, and more, Leustig and his crew go back more than a millennium to present an fascinating account of Indians, including those (like the Maya and Aztecs in Mexico and the Anasazi in the Southwest) who were here long before white men ever reached these shores.

It was the arrival of Europeans like Columbus, Cortez, and DeSoto that marked the beginning of the end for the Indians. Considering the participation of host Kevin Costner, whose film Dances with Wolves was highly sympathetic to the Indians, it's no bulletin that 500 Nations also takes a compassionate view of the multitude of calamities--from alcohol and disease to the corruption of their culture and the depletion of their vast natural resources--visited on them by the white man in his quest for land and money, eventually leading to such horrific events as the Trail of Tears "forced march," the massacre at Wounded Knee, and other consequences of the effort to "relocate" Indians to the reservations where many of them still live. Along the way, we learn about the Indians' participation in such events as the American Revolution and the War of 1812, as well as popular legends like the first Thanksgiving (it really happened) and the rescue of Captain John Smith by Pocahontas (it probably didn't).

With its sometimes New Age-y music and many beauty shots of the great outdoors, 500 Nations has a rather different vibe than the average Ken Burns documentary. That may lessen its value for sober historians, but for the rest of us, this is an illuminating and important work. --Sam Graham

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