“Sacred Stage: Talks with Native Playwrights & Artists with Diane Fraher of The Heart Stays (2024)”

American Indian Airwaves

With Hollywood film production costs easily exceeding millions of dollars per film, and given the constant marginalization, erasures, and stereotypes about Native Americans and Indigenous peoples for more than a century, as well as the film industry’s chronic unwillingness to unconditionally support an abundance of Native American film productions, distributions, and exhibitions, many Native Americans film writers, producers, and directors find themselves working independently outside of the Hollywood-entertainment media system. Our guest for the hour is the writer, director and producer of a new feature film, The Heart Stays (2024), a coming-of-age story about two Osage sisters. Cast with veteran and non-veteran Native American actors/actresses, our guest for the hour emphasizes the unique artistic importance of the film, demonstrates how the film’s story is an artistically superior method of Native storytelling, and expresses how a unique community-based business model was used to produce The Heart Stays. Tune in for the hour to hear our guest explain how and where the film was made and how this ground-breaking and newly produced featured film is truly a Native American film that all must experience and see. The Heart Stays was released on March 26th, 2024, and is available on a variety of digital streaming platforms including, but not limited to: Apple TV, Prime Video, Vudu, Google Play, and DirecTV. Guest: • Diane Fraher (Osage/Cherokee Nations), founder and director of Amerinda Inc., a community-based multi-arts organization that works to empower Native Americans. She also the writer, director and producer of a new feature film, The Heart Stays (2024), a coming-of-age story about two Osage sisters filmed on Osage Nation. Archived AIA programs are on Soundcloud at: https://soundcloud.com/burntswamp American Indian Airwaves streams on over ten podcasting platforms such as Amazon Music, Apple Podcast, Audible, Backtracks.fm, Gaana, Google Podcast, Fyyd, iHeart Media, Mixcloud, Player.fm, Podbay.fm, Podcast Republic, SoundCloud, Spotify, Tunein, YouTube, and more.