The Taking

Details

This special limited edition slipcover is limited to 1,000 units and is only available on our website and at select indie retailers. Absolutely no major retailers will be stocking them.

Dekanalog is a film and soundtrack distribution company dedicated to the release of the most unique filmmaking voices and musical scores from around the world. Vinegar Syndrome’s sister company, OCN Distribution, is thrilled to be representing this diverse and unique home video line!

This illuminating essay uses film scenes to tell of the forced cultural appropriation of a world-famous landscape. Monument Valley is one of the most recognizable landscapes in the world. Its iconographic use in American Westerns has had a lasting influence on stock photography, advertising, and tourism. The valley has been given mythical significance as an image of a “primitive West” firmly in the hands of white people and meant to be protected from intruders. The fact that Monument Valley is traditional Navajo territory has been obscured in the process. A radical examination of Monument Valley’s representation in cinema and advertising since John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), The Taking scrutinizes how a site located on sovereign Navajo land came to embody the fantasy of the “Old West,” replete with self-perpetuating falsehoods, and why it continues to hold mythic significance in the global psyche.

directed by: Alexandre O. Philippe
starring: Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Liza Black, Sir Christopher Frayling, Robert M. Bednar, John Bucher
2021 / 76 min / 1.85:1 / English, Italian DTS-HD MA 5.1, 2.0

Additional info:

• Region A Blu-ray
• Interview with filmmaker Alexandre O. Philippe
• Super 8 Montage of Monument Valley footage used in the film
• The Spot - short film by Alexandre O. Philippe
• Theatrical Trailer
• Booklet Essay by Scout Tafoya
• English SDH subtitles