Coming to Light tells the dramatic story of Curtis' life, the creation of his monumental work, and his changing views of the people he set out to document. The film also gives Indian people a voice in the discussion of Curtis' images. Hopi, Navajo, Eskimo, Blackfeet, Crow, Blood, Piegan, Suquamish, and Kwakiutl people who are descended from Curtis subjects or who are using his photographs for cultural preservation respond to the pictures, tell stories about the people in the photographs, and discuss the meaning of the images.

In 1900, Curtis attended a Piegan Sundance, a ceremony that had recently been outlawed. Curtis believed this would be the last Sundance, and it was this experience that set him on his path to document traditional Indian cultures. Eighty years later, some of Curtis' photographs inspired the Piegans to revive the ceremony, and it is still going strong today. The documentary begins with footage shot at a contemporary Piegan Sundance last year intercut with Curtis' 1900 photographs that led to its revival.

When Curtis began photographing Indians, he believed that their cultures were vanishing. When he finished in 1930, his own work vanished into obscurity, then was rediscovered in the 1970s and helped to inspire the revival of traditional culture on many reservations.

Coming to Light presents a complex, dedicated, flawed life, and explores many of the ironies inherent in Curtis's story, the often controversial nature of his romantic images, and the value of the photographs to Indian people and to all Americans today.

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Reviews
"COMING TO LIGHT tells more than the story of its main subject, 'Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indians.' It tells, too, of the tragedy of cultural loss and hopes for recovery of memory. The film honors the great achievements of Curtis by placing his pictures in a vibrant frame of sorrow, desire, and promise. In its sensitive and intelligent fusion of image, sound, and story, the film offers an extraordinary experience of living history. It cannot be praised enough."