BRITISH film director Steven Lewis Simpson is hoping his latest film will help the North American Indians recover from decades of negative portrayal by Hollywood.

Steven travelled to America and one of the poorest region’s in the United States – the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which borders South Dakota and Nebraska – to spend 18 days filming an adaptation of the best selling book Neither Wolf Nor Dog, by Kent Nerburn.

The film, which has already drawn big audiences across the UK and America, will be shown in Ulverston’s Oxen Park Cinema Club on Saturday, February 22.

The story begins when the white author, Kent, receives a mysterious phone call asking him to meet an old man – Dan – on a distant Indian reservation. Despite misgivings, he travels across the Great Plains to the old man shack on a bleak and poverty stricken reservation. Dan hands Kent a shoe-box full of notes and tells him to turn them into a book.

The author is stunned by their profound insights about American culture and the Native perspective. In a desolate motel Kent tries to construct a chapter from the notes.

A storm engulfs them, which Dan interprets as a voice from the dead willing them to Wounded Knee. As they walk by the mass grave, Dan talks about the massacre and confronts Kent until he breaks through an emotional wall. The author connects with a guilt over what his people perpetrated, merged with an empathy for the Lakota people and the horrors inflicted upon them that fateful day.

Many people will be familiar with the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee on the North American Indians by the US Cavalry in 1890 – an event told in the well-known book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown.

The 95-year-old in the film was played by Dave Bald Eagle, who was 95 at the time.

“Dave’s family were closer to Wounded Knee than the character he was playing. At the end of the filming he said that he had been holding that in for 95 years,” said director Steven.

“For the final scene we were improvising with a 95-year-old. We only filmed it once.”

Dave himself had a fascinating history. He was left for dead on D-Day on June 6 1944, while serving with the US forces, and had relatives at the infamous Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890.

When he died at 97, for a time his obituary was the BBC’s most-read story. NPR debated whether he was “the world’s most interesting man”.

Neither Wolf Nor Dog takes the audience on a deeply moving road trip through contemporary Lakota life. Its humour is wry and pulls no punches, introducing deep characters and poignant stories that challenge the viewer to see the world a bit differently.

“We shot in 18 days,” said Steven. “Shooting that fast normally means long 16 hour shooting days but we had a 95-year-old star and a very unreliable Buick and so typically we shot around eight hours a day. It was essential for another reason, which was when I rolled into the reservation six days before the start of shooting, little was in place. Not even where we would all be staying.

“But I knew that in an odd way that’s how things work best on the reservation: Last minute things fall into place more. So I spent most evenings preparing for the next day, including sometimes casting and location scouting or making props. We were chasing our tail but the weather was spectacularly reliable for the Great Plains and things fell into place.”

It is not the first film Steven has made there, and is hoping that his work can improve the lives of North American Indians.

“On the reservations people are living out of convenience stores. Unemployment is over 80%, life expectancy is 48 for men and 57 for women. After Haiti it is the lowest in the western hemisphere,” said Steven.

“I don’t think any group has ever been treated as badly by cinema,” he added, referencing the former American cowboy films of years gone by which portrayed the ‘Red Indians’ in a negative light.

Steven is originally from Aberdeen – at 18 he was the youngest stockbroker in Britain – but decided he wanted a career in films.

“When I was 18 in Aberdeen I wanted to make movies but no-one from Aberdeen had ever made a film! When I made my first at 23 I was the only person in Scotland that year who made a feature,” he said.

His adaptation of the book Neither Wolf Nor Dog came about after a chance meeting.

“I was approached by the author because I had been filming in that region of America for many years,” said Steven. “I had been doing a couple of films on the reservation. The author happened to be in town, and he stumbled on the filming.”

The film has been packing cinemas and community cinemas in Scotland – Steven released it in his home country first before turning to England – and had the biggest ever turnouts in a number of them.

Neither Wolf Nor Dog is showing at the Oxen Park Cinema Club in Ulverston on Saturday, starting at 7.30pm.