Fred Johnson's Movie

I’d like to see Fred Johnson’s only movie again.

Forty years ago I was a filmmaker here. I edited film in my friend Bud’s [Professor Orville Joseph Wanzer, Jr.’s] office in Milton Hall, at NMSU. Bud taught filmmaking and film appreciation. University filmmaking courses were new, and at better-known schools students didn’t touch the cameras for years. But Bud had figured out that military surplus cameras were available free to New Mexico schools and universities. Our used 16 mm Bolexes and Auricons weren’t state-of-the-art, but we loved ‘em; and Bud could not only discuss the meaning of Ingmar Bergman’s or Federico Fellini’s films, he could fix cameras. His students immediately got to check out cameras, shoot film, have Bud process it, and then edit it.

Fred Johnson wasn’t a film student. Fred Johnson was an idealistic young Dineh man on his way through NMSU on the way to being a lawyer. He lived in married student housing with his wife and at least one child.

If Fred told me just why he took such an offbeat academic byway as Bud’s filmmaking course, I forgot long ago. Bud’s courses were simple: you made a 10-minute film, we watched it, and Bud gave you a grade. No tests, no term papers, no nonsense.

I was often at work on editing. Digression for younger folks: just as there weren’t always telephones or motorcars, video used to not exist. There was no digital editing, no FinalCutPro, baffling ‘til you learn it, then wonderfully quick and easy. You literally cut movie film into strips, hung the strips on hooks in special bins that had soft cloth to keep the hanging film from getting scratched. Then, with actual glue, you spliced it together in the desired order. And refined it as necessary.

Fred shot a film; but on the last week of the semester, he had no clue how to edit it. So one long night, or maybe parts of two nights when we were both in the editing rooms, I taught him how to edit, then answered occasion questions.

When Fred showed his film, it was damned good for a student film; and it’s one I wish I could show some folks even now. His film was a day in the life of his daughter, who was in grade school. It showed her at home, listening to Navajo music, eating with her family, then on the schoolbus, surrounded by shouting kids and loud radios, then in school, then at home again. It showed, without any political or philosophical commentary, how jarringly different portions of her day were from each other. How foreign the school environment was for her. It stuck in my mind.

Fred became a lawyer, and a Navajo Tribal Council member. When protesters occupied a place on the reservation, Fred was one of the few outsiders they trusted. He flew in and out, negotiating. One flight crashed, killing him. It was a sad end to someone who might have done much good for the Navajo Nation. Good guy, too.

Recently, in connection with a documentary about Bud, folks found Fred’s film, and other student films from that era. It’s been copied onto video. But without Fred’s permission – or, now, his family’s – it can’t be shown.

I want to see it again. I want to make sure Fred’s family has a copy. If anyone reading this can help us reach them, please do. Thanks!

                                               – 30 – 

[The above column appeared this morning, Sunday, 10 April, 2022, in the Las Cruces Sun-News, as well as on the newspaper's website and KRWG's website. A related radio commentary will air during the week on KRWG (90.7 FM) and KTAL-LP. (101.5 FM – http://www.lccommunityradio.org/), and will presently be available on demand on KRWG’s site.]

[If someone knows Fred’s widow or children, please contact me, or have them do so, and I’ll put ‘em in touch with the people at NMSU who digitized his film and others from that era. Similarly, anyone else who made a film in Bud Wanzer’s class around the early 1970s and doesn’t have a copy of it should let us know.] 

[I liked Fred, but didn't know him well.  As someone who also sought political change, I liked that in becoming a lawyer he was still fighting for change.  (A caller just now who read the column and had known Fred as a young lawyer said Fred was head of the Coalition for Navajo Liberation.)  As a decent, thoughtful fellow who was both a fighter for change and a member of the Tribal Council (and a lawyer), Fred might have done a lot of good.]

[He's remembered, too.   A 2017 letter to the Navajo Times recalled:

"Prior to AIM, I, like so many others, was still recovering from historical trauma of the attempted genocide of our people. The younger generation had not yet been told the truth. The elder generation was silent due to fear of the federal government. There was discontent among the Native Americans and it could no longer be tolerated by those who were living the horror occurring in the cities. Natives were being targeted.

"Natives were being murdered. Leaders like Dennis Banks and locally, the late Fred Johnson, began addressing the problem. Natives were politically known as the “silent minority.” It was unheard of for Natives to speak out and when they did it caused waves of anger."

[I've mentioned Bud in four previous columns: Celebrating Lives and Llife (19March 2019);  Teachers, Actors, and Time (30Sept2012);  and Going to Derry (14July2019), and The Devil's Mistress Comes Home (1December2019).   "Celebrating" was written soon after he died; "Derry" was about a trip with younger filmmakers (videographers) to our land in Derry, where Bud lived for 26 years after he retired, and has pictures of him, the place, and his stained-glass; and the 2012 piece was about recalling meeting Bud, Mark Medoff, and Keith Wilson in August 1969, when I first arrived here.   The fourth described a showing of Bud's film, "The Devil's Mistress," in the Rio Grande Theater, where it had premiered with such joy and high hopes in 1965.]

 

Bud on Blue Mesa (1979)