In conjunction with An Indigenous Present, Indigenash presents an evening of film and conversation featuring three Nashville-based filmmakers whose work reflects distinct cultural experiences and creative perspectives from across Turtle Island.
Trenton Wheeler will screen Grassdancer, a poetic mini-documentary offering visual glimpses into the contemporary life of a mixed Indigenous musician and Northern Plains grass dancer.
Jeffrey Brant will share the first seven minutes of The Alley, a proof of concept he cocreated, directed, and edited for a television series passion project. He will explore how the project’s evolving pitch process has paralleled his own growing understanding of what it means to navigate the entertainment industry as a Native filmmaker.
Mexican writer-director Andrés Pérez-Duarte will screen Mexican Delight, a new dark comedy following Luz, a devout Catholic plagued by unsettling dreams who becomes desperate to stay awake at all costs.
Following the screenings, Wheeler, Brant, and Pérez-Duarte will join a moderated conversation exploring how culture, identity, and lived experience influence a filmmaker’s perspective without defining or limiting the stories they may tell. Together, they will discuss artistic freedom, creative responsibility, genre, craft, and the realities of carrying a story from its earliest vision to an audience. A Q&A session will follow.
This event is presented in partnership with IndigeNash.
Top image: Dakota Mace. So’II (Stars II), 2022. Unique arrangement of 40 chemigrams; 38 x 51 in. Courtesy the artist. © Dakota Mace
About the presenters
Trenton Wheeler is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, producer, and storyteller based in Nashville. He is the founder and lead singer of the acclaimed band Seryn, whose expansive, cinematic sound has taken him to stages throughout North America. A lifelong Northern Plains grass dancer, his creative practice moves across songwriting and music production, dance, film, cultural education, and advocacy, exploring the relationships between identity, tradition, and contemporary Indigenous life. Trenton is a cofounder and lead programmer of IndigeNash, Nashville’s first multidisciplinary arts festival dedicated to celebrating and creating opportunities for Indigenous artists and creatives. His 2023 short documentary Grassdancer offers a poetic meditation on mixed Indigeneity, urban Native life, and the enduring presence of cultural tradition.
Originally from Brantford, Ontario, and now based in Nashville, Jeffrey Brant is an Anishinaabe/Ojibwe citizen of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation and a writer, director, editor, producer, and cofounder of IndigeNash. His career spans film, television, documentary, international touring, and live production, including Emmy-nominated work with KGV Studios and an 18-year career with CMA Fest. Through his filmmaking and his work with IndigeNash, Brant is focused on elevating Indigenous storytellers, creating greater access and opportunity for Native creatives, and building bridges between their work, wider audiences, institutions, and the entertainment industry.
Andrés Pérez-Duarte is a Mexican writer-director based in Nashville. His work spans film, television, games, and immersive media, centering queer-of-color stories with heart, humor, and a rebellious streak. He cowrote and cocreated Lili, a screen-life thriller reimagining Lady Macbeth in modern Iran, which premiered at the ’25 Cannes Film Festival (Immersive). He also cocreated Hero, a VR experience on migration, which won AIS Lumiere and Tribeca Storyscapes Awards. Other credits include the BAFTA-nominated game 1979 Revolution, a neo-Hitchcockian thriller; Fire Escape; and the short film Galeana No. 8. A GLAAD List alum, Pérez-Duarte is developing his feature debut, The Last Supper, with Moon7 films, and cochairs the WGA LGBTQ+ Salon. He was the winner of the MACRO x The Black List x Warner Bros. Incubator, an alum of the ’25 Gotham Week Market, and is a ’26 Film Independent Screenwriting Lab Fellow.
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