"A Fistful of Dollars" Dubbed In Navajo To Be Screened

Here's something interesting I've come across.

Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) has been dubbed in Navajo and is to play in venues in the Navajo Nation starting November 16.

According to Tucson.com:

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Manuelito Wheeler isn't sure exactly why Navajo elders admire Western films.

It could be that many of them were treated to the films in boarding schools off the reservation decades ago. Or, like his father, they told stories of gathering around a television growing up to watch gunslingers in a battle against good and evil on familiar-looking landscapes.

Whatever the reason, Navajo elders have been asking Wheeler to dub a Western in the Navajo language ever since “Star Wars IV: A New Hope” was translated into Navajo and released in 2013.

The result? “Béeso Dah Yiníłjaa’” or “A Fistful of Dollars,” an iconic Western starring Clint Eastwood who plays a stranger — known as “The Man With No Name” — entering a Mexican village among a power struggle between families. The 1964 flick is the first in a trilogy of spaghetti Westerns produced and directed by Italians.

Unlike many other Westerns produced in the U.S., it has no Native Americans in it. That appealed to Wheeler, the director of the Navajo Nation Museum.

“A Fistful of Dollars” is the third major film dubbed in Navajo, an effort financed by the tribe to preserve the language. Elbert Jumbo voiced Bruce the shark and another fish in the Navajo version of “Finding Nemo,” released in 2016.

To read the full article, go here.