Planner, Southern California Indian Center, Inc.
James Lujan is a Planner for Southern California Indian Center, Inc., and its subsidiary InterTribal Entertainment. His duties include developing training and employment opportunities for Native Americans in the film industry. Originally from Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, Lujan brings over fifteen years of experience as a filmmaker, playwright and film instructor.
As a filmmaker, his documentaries, which have been screened at film festivals all over the world, include "High Strange New Mexico" (1997), a probe into the state's UFO subculture (available on Amazon.com); "Little Rock's Run" (1998), following the odyssey of a Native American fugitive; "Fame Eater" (1999) a look into the mind of Hollywood cult author John Gilmore; "Inner Spirit" (2001), a glimpse at the impact of AIDS in the Pueblo Indian community; and "Challenger: An Exploration of Art and Spirit" (2003), a profile of renowned New Mexico artist Jd Challenger (available on Amazon.com).
His screenplay, "Nation," a generational saga about a Native American family, was a winner of the 1992 Minority Screenwriter's Competition sponsored by Disney, the City of L.A. and the L.A. Writers Workshop. He was chosen as a Sundance Native Screenwriting Fellow on the strength of his screenplay, "Fast Elk," about an American Indian superhero, which was workshopped during the 2004 Sundance Film Festival.
Lujan is an alumnus of Stanford University and the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television. In 2000, Lujan founded the Taos Filmmakers Initiative, a nonprofit organization which offered film training workshops to the northern New Mexico community. He and his students produced "Tales of Taos," a collection of five short comedic films, which was screened in 2001 at the gone-but-not-forgotten Taos Talking Picture Festival.
As a playwright, he has had two professionally staged productions. The first, "Casi Hermanos" (1995), a dramatic account of the causes leading up to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, was produced by La Compania de Teatro in Albuquerque. His follow-up play, "Kino and Teresa" (2005), an adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, a thematic sequel set after the Spanish Reconquest of 1692, was an Equity production of Native Voices at the Autry in March 2005 in Los Angeles, and earned a rave review in the L.A. Times, in which it was described as "beautifully conceived, quietly devastating." The play will also be produced in September 2006 by the VSA North Fourth Art Center in Albuquerque. His newest play, "Midnight Society," a Native American version of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," set during the Taos art colony of the 1920s, will be produced in 2007.
Lujan also recently served as a mentor for all-Native American crew for the 7th Annual Duke City Shootout in Albuquerque. His next project is the feature film adaptation of his successful play, "Kino and Teresa."
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