The Lenfest Center Presents ‘Voices of the Pamunkey’ Film Screening The Oct. 14 event will feature two short films by multimedia artist and Pamunkey citizen Ethan Brown.

Office of Communications and Public Affairs
October 1, 2025

The Lenfest Center at Washington and Lee University presents a film screening spotlighting “Voices of the Pamunkey,” with works by Ethan Brown, at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 14 in Northen Auditorium in Leyburn Library. A question-and-answer session will follow the screening.

The event, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Lenfest Center’s Outreach & Engagement (O&E) series. “Voices of the Pamunkey” will feature screenings of the experimental short film “First Landing” and the Emmy Award-nominated documentary “Connecting Currents — Pamunkey River: Lifeblood of our People.”

Brown, a citizen of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, is a featured artist in the pop-up exhibit “Native Art & Ancestral Inspiration: Drawing Endurance,” on view in W&L’s Stan Kamen Gallery through Dec. 15. Deeply rooted in his cultural heritage, his work draws inspiration from Pamunkey history and tradition, intertwining themes of identity, community and nature. Brown is a self-taught multimedia artist, and his recent venture into filmmaking offers another perspective through which he can explore Indigenous storytelling.

“Filmmaking allows me to go deeper and more complex with telling stories and creating experiences,” he said. “It shares things like composition or certain themes and images with my visual art, but with an added level of the unknown to the creative process. I like going back and forth between working on films and making visual art because they each have strengths of expression.”

“First Landings” (2022), directed by Brown, reflects on the far-reaching effects of European colonization of the Americas on Indigenous peoples. Interwoven storylines span North America, converging in a vision of lost cultural artifacts that symbolize both a warning from the past and hope for the future.

Brown contributed photographic work to “Connecting Currents” (2020), which was produced in tandem with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The film documents the environmental threats facing the Pamunkey River and how the Pamunkey people, in partnership with governmental agencies, are working to restore the native fish population to this essential waterway.

Brown’s works can be found in the permanent collections of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and he has held artist residencies, given lectures and led workshops throughout Virginia. With ongoing commissions focused on significant moments in Pamunkey and Virginia Indigenous history, his evolving body of work preserves and celebrates native culture, offering audiences a chance to experience Indigenous creativity and resilience firsthand.