Hiawatha, the Messiah of the Ojibway 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 usual productions of 1903, which rarely exceeded three minutes. The film's subtitle was "The Passion Play
The Song of Hiawatha Epic and transferred them to the American Indians'—it is absurd". Longfellow also insisted in his letter to Sumner that, "I know the Kalevala very well, and that some of its legends resemble the Indian stories preserved by Schoolcraft is very true. But the idea of making me responsible for that is too ludicrous." Later scholars continued to debate the extent to which "The Song of Hiawatha" borrowed its themes, episodes, and outline from the "Kalevala." Despite the critics, the poem was immediately popular with readers and continued so for many decades. The Grolier Club named "The Song of Hiawatha" the