indieWIRE asked director Chris Eyre about his new project, "A Year in Mooring," and his inspiration for the film.

"I became a filmmaker when I started taking pictures as a teenager. I photographed everything—people, animals and many landscapes. I didn’t know why, but as a Native-American adoptee, I first started looking at all the historical photos of my own tribe in high school and tried to figure out who all these distant relatives might be. I especially loved the historical photos by Edward Sheriff Curtis. I found out later that my great, great grandfather on my Cheyenne-side was photographed by Curtis in 1899. His name was “Cohoe/Nohoe” or “lame man” (due to a bad leg). By using images, I was trying to go back somewhere and understand more of who I was or who my biological people were that I had lost.

My new movie “A Year in Mooring” uses landscapes as atmosphere to help tell the characters stories. Those are the type of movies I like best, one’s that could come from a lost photograph.

In 2007, I was screening a movie I directed for Showtime at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. After the Q&A, a tall 6’5” man approached and said he wanted me to direct his screenplay. I was flattered, assumed he was un-produced, and there was no financing attached—I was right. This polite and spirited man turned out to become a great friend; screenwriter Peter Vanderwall. I asked if he would send the script to my agent. Three months or so later, I received a call from my agent Nancy Nigrosh. She had looked at this unsolicited screenplay and wanted me to read it. It was a script that moved everyone, but most importantly it moved producer Sally Jo Effenson of Joule Films, who I’ve known for almost 20 years. She got it!"

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Meet the 2011 SXSW Filmmakers | “A Year in Mooring” Director Chris Eyre (indieWIRE 3/15)