1961 film on urban Indians

Portrait of Indian Life in Los Angeles Revived"The Exiles," a film about American Indians living on the edge of central Los Angeles in the 1950s, is both a chronicle and a casualty of neglect: a movie about a forsaken community that itself became a lost object.

Directed by Kent Mackenzie, a first-time filmmaker who had just graduated from the University of Southern California, it is a poetic and empathetic hybrid of fiction and documentary. The nonprofessional actors play versions of themselves: young Indians, newly relocated from reservations and adrift in working-class Bunker Hill.

"The Exiles" was shown at the Venice International Film Festival in 1961 and won plaudits during its brief run on the festival circuit. But it quickly faded from view, as did Mackenzie, who directed only one other feature, "Saturday Morning" (1970), and died, at 50, in 1980.

Like "Killer of Sheep" (1977), which had its theatrical release last year to widespread praise and considerable success, "The Exiles" was restored by the Film and Television Archive at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is being released by Milestone, the boutique distributor that has made a specialty of salvaging lost classics. Seen today, Mackenzie's film appears to uncover a history not so much secret as occluded: a subculture and a way of life that has been virtually invisible.What it's about:"The Exiles" follows a group of urban American Indians over a 12-hour period from dusk to dawn. While the main female character wanders the streets alone, her husband and his buddies, awash in booze, look for trouble and a good time, drifting from bar to liquor store to dance hall. The night ends high in the hills above the city lights, as the soundtrack's jukebox rock 'n' roll gives way to ceremonial chanting and drumming.

Mackenzie prepared for the shoot by hanging out with the residents of Bunker Hill he had befriended and from whom the cast was drawn. "He spent a year and a half researching, and he just sat with them night after night after night," Morrill said. "There was never any script." A portrait of a vanished community, "The Exiles" retains a contemporary relevance. "Seventy percent of Natives live in urban areas now," said Sherman Alexie, the American Indian novelist and filmmaker who is helping Milestone present "The Exiles.""We might have better jobs or be college educated, but the struggle to maintain your Native identity in a city is the primary struggle today."

In focusing on the first wave of Indians relocated in the 1950s by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, "The Exiles" documents a displacement that Alexie says has received scant notice from a younger generation of Indians. "None of us made that movie," he said. "Nobody writes about the relocated anymore. In a sense that first generation has been abandoned even by other Natives." He added: "They were the immigrants, and by and large everybody in America loves to pretend they've always been here, even the people who've always been here. Ignoring the first generation of immigrants makes you feel like you've always belonged."Comment:  For more on the subject, see The Best Indian Movies.