Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway of America" and was largely a photographed stage play with Longfellow's words spoken in a natural surrounding. Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway is a 1903 dramatic short film shot in Canada directed by the American pioneering cinematographer and director Joe Rosenthal, based on the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem, "The Song of Hiawatha", made in Desbarats, Ontario, with a cast of Ojibway First Nations people. According to the "Canadian Journal of Film Studies", it was the first dramatic narrative film to be shot in Canada. At 15 minutes, "Hiawatha" was considerably longer than
The Song of Hiawatha (Coleridge-Taylor) Choirs Festival of 1898 after Edward Elgar had recommended him as "far and away the cleverest fellow going amongst the younger men". Having been greatly inspired by his reading of Longfellow's epic poem "The Song of Hiawatha" (even later naming his own son "Hiawatha"), he decided to set the words to music in a choral work called "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast". The score was completed in May 1898 and was published by Novello before the first performance was given. Interest in "Hiawatha's Wedding Feast" was so great from sales of the music that, even before a single note of the work