With all the talk in recent years about immigration, the plight of native Americans has virtually disappeared from the headlines. But those problems haven't gone away.

Hence the relevance and power of Kent MacKenzie's 1961 film The Exiles, a documentary about a group of young native Americans who left their reservations in the late 1950s to live in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. MacKenzie's film, which opened last Friday at the IFC Center in New York, couldn't find distribution when it was made and fell into obscurity, seen only by a handful of cinephiles over the past 47 years.

After a restored print was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in February, the film finally got the recognition it deserves.

Very much of its time, The Exiles straddles the line between documentary and fiction, featuring non-actors and authentic scenarios, but often staged, directed, and scripted by MacKenzie for dramatic effect.

Film afficionados will see a trace of Jean Rouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and even Robert S. Flaherty in this artful work of cinema. Its subjects appear to live their lives candidly, as if caught unawares by the cameras that follow them through the alleyways, squalid apartments, and nightclubs of their small piece of LA. Meanwhile, voiceovers remind us that, yes, this is a documentary and not a fiction film.

But as the best documentaries prove, there is no real difference. Both forms, when done right, have the power to teach us something about humanity, to affect us both intellectually and emotionally, and to show us life as it may be lived.

And The Exiles does all three with a light touch.MacKenzie does not go on and on about his subjects and their problems, or lay blame on those who displaced them. Rather, he simply presents their lives and lets them speak for themselves.

The Exiles may be a product of the early 1960s, but its message transcends history. No doubt, few will take the time to see the film during its brief run at the IFC, but those who do will be glad they took a chance on this near-forgotten documentary.

[Image: The Exiles film stills]