Santa Fe Independent Film Festival will honor two actresses
Jane Seymour and Tantoo Cardinal will each receive a Lifetime Achievement Award
For the first time since its inception, the Santa Fe Independent Film Festival will honor two actresses with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Jane Seymour, perhaps best known for her role in the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and Tantoo Cardinal, among the most famous Native actresses, will be recognized at the 11th annual event.
The Lifetime Achievement Awards, organizers say, is meant to acknowledge the lasting impact the women have made on independent film and beyond.
“We look for people who … cinema really wouldn’t be the same without them,” said Liesette Paisner Bailey, the festival’s executive director.
In previous years, some of those recognized include Maggie Renzi, John Sayles and George R.R. Martin.
Bailey said Seymour and Cardinal were selected this year for their decades of work in both television and film. Seymour earned a Golden Globe for her performance in the East of Eden miniseries (1981), an Emmy for Onassis: The Richest Man in the World (1988) and two Emmy nominations and her second Golden Globe for Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (1993-98).
Cardinal has played more than 100 roles throughout her 40-year career. She appeared in Dances with Wolves (1990), Legends of the Fall (1994) and Wind River (2017), as well as the television series North of 60 (1992-98).
The two starred together in Dear Prudence in 2009. Over a five-day period in October, the festival will showcase 100 films, including a couple that include Seymour and
Cardinal. Additionally, a wide variety of workshops, panels and in-depth discussions are planned.
When Seymour is honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award on Oct. 18, the organization will show the iconic 1980 cult classic Somewhere in Time, in which Seymour plays a woman who unknowingly falls in love with a time traveler.
On Oct. 19, Cardinal will receive her award and introduce her latest film, Falls Around Her. She plays the famous Anishinaabe musician Mary Birchbark, who returns to her reservation in Canada after years on the road as a star.
“It’s the first time we’ve awarded two actresses, especially two actresses of this caliber,” said Bailey, noting that in
the past there have either been writers, directors or filmmakers in the mix — or no actors at all.
Cardinal and Seymour, she added, are “people who have Achievement Award on Oct. 18 at 6:30 p.m. Tantoo Cardinal will be given her Lifetime Achievement Award at 7 p.m. the following night, Oct. 19.
Where: The Lensic Performing Arts Center, 211 W. San Francisco St.
influenced independent film and film as a whole. We always look for the very best people to award, and this year it just happened to be women.”