IN DIRECTOR PAUL GREENGRASS’S News of the World, many scenes in the Tom Hanks Western captured the New Mexico landscape. Shot in and around Santa Fe and Galisteo, the 2019 movie marked the inaugural production of a new studio set among the chamisa-studded hills of northern New Mexico.
The Hollywood film was a glitzy red-carpet debut for the fledgling Camel Rock Studios, the country’s first film and television production facility entirely owned and operated by an Indigenous tribe, the people of Tesuque Pueblo. For the pueblo, the call from Universal Studios came just as the new business was getting off the ground at the site of the former pueblo-owned casino.
“It fits a niche for the industry,” says stage manager Peter Romero. “We’ve done a lot of upgrades to the building and infrastructure of the facility to accommodate productions.”
Joe Leaphorn’s home on "Dark Winds" is actually a Camel Rock Studios soundstage.
Photograph courtesy of Michael Moriatis/AMC.
Camel Rock has eight interior standing sets, including a two-story entry for a public building and a barroom. The two interior filming areas total 30,400 square feet, while a free-standing 12,000-square-foot mill provides fabrication space for sets and props. Large front and back lots ensure plenty of room for the trailers that accompany major productions to haul equipment and house the star talent.
When the pueblo opened a new casino close to the Santa Fe Opera, the tribal government made the decision to transform the old gaming center into a film studio. “There was a lot of talk about what to do with the old property,” says Tesuque Pueblo’s Lt. Governor Floyd Samuel, who previously served as the casino’s general manager. “It’s amazing to see how it used to be slot machines, table games, and a restaurant, and now it’s a movie set.”
In late summer, Dark Winds, the AMC series based on the crime novels of Tony Hillerman, wrapped its third season at Camel Rock. Set in 1971, Dark Winds takes place on the Navajo Nation near Monument Valley, Arizona, using Tesuque land as a stand-in for multiple locations. The series follows tribal police lieutenant Joe Leaphorn, played by Zahn McClarnon (Reservation Dogs, Doctor Sleep), and deputy Jim Chee, played by Kiowa Gordon (Blood Quantum, The Red Road), who are investigating a double homicide.
Like the Hillerman novels, the TV series explores life on the Navajo Nation. “I’m fully embracing the eclectic diversity of what Tony Hillerman was doing and what our Native writers do in amalgamating [his stories] and putting it out as a living piece of entertainment,” says director Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals). “It’s contemporary but also historical to the 1970s.”
Camel Rock Studios is the first Indigenous-owned film and TV production facility in the U.S., pioneering a new era of storytelling in New Mexico.
Photograph courtesy of Camel Rock Studios.
The period details help sell the audience on Dark Winds’s authenticity. Such a thing is possible with an adaptable set and a professionally run facility. A tour of Camel Rock’s eight active sets, for example, includes the interiors of the Navajo Tribal Police Department; a jail cell with wooden bars made to look like steel; and an Indian Health Services office, replete with period-era posters promoting health and wellness, a rotary front-desk phone, and a depressingly institutional-green paint job.
“All these sets are like a big jigsaw puzzle,” Romero says. “They take them apart in pieces so they can be stored in an efficient manner. Everything’s got to be period-correct stuff. And they take an amazing amount of photos to make sure that when they do come back, everything is exactly the way it was when they finished filming.”
With their current contract locked up by Dark Winds and AMC, Camel Rock has no other features or TV shows currently filming on site, but the studio intends to give Indigenous-helmed projects precedence going forward. As for a season 4 of Dark Winds? That has yet to be announced, but Camel Rock is ready. “People want to be here,” Romero says. “The sets are here. Everything’s done here.”
Read more: The artist and producer connects filmmakers with New Mexico and its stories.
