Film Categories: Indigenous

  • ôtênaw

    “ôtênaw” is a film documenting the oral storytelling of Dwayne Donald, an educator from Treaty 6, Edmonton Canada. Drawing from nêhiyawak philosophies, he speaks about the multilayered histories of Indigenous peoples’ presence both within and around amiskwacîwâskahikan, or what has come to be known as the city of Edmonton.

  • A Celebration of Darkness

    A woman with a tortured past is triggered to take an unexpected walk down memory lane, she finds herself face-to- face with her inner child. Giving her a chance to make peace with her past. Does she find a way to celebrate darkness or does she become engulfed forever by it? In 2015, Jaene turned 40. This lead her to become introspective about her unusual life history. From a childhood of severe abuse, neglect, psychiatric institutionalization and being in care, she grew to become a street involved sex worker by 20. She met Elder, Isaac Day from Serpent River First…

  • Soup For My Brother

    “In this strikingly poetic documentary about memory, loss and brotherly love, we find Jimmy, guided by the memory and words of his grandfather, preparing a soup for his beloved brother Danny, who passed away one year ago.” — imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival (2016) Image description: Two hands holding old photos as someone looks at them. On top is a black-and-white headshot of an Indigenous boy, smiling and looking sharp in a checked shirt. Below is a colour photo of three older Indigenous women posing in a yard or field.

  • lay claim to an island

    Texts from the 1969 American Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and letters from supporters propel an exploration of political yearning, emancipatory architecture and failed utopias. What does it mean to claim land that has more value as a symbol than as a potential home? And how does that symbol function beyond the boundaries of its geographic limits?

  • Looking For Carmen

    “In his most ravishing and heartbreaking work, Arriaga ventures again to his native Peru in search of a lost friend. Along the way he encounters the faces of those who speak about wounds that cannot heal—survivors recounting the deaths and disappearances of their beloveds during Peru’s civil war that pitted the communists of The Shining Path against the government, with both sides aligned against the people. “The dead have called us to find them,” remarks Lida Flores de Huaman, and Marcos follows her evocation, cutting memory trails into Peru that bring back the names of the disappeared. Using frames that…

  • Dr. Bish Remedies

    From Ross Lipman’s “personal ethnographies” series, an informal visit with legendary filmmaker Bruce Baillie at his home on Camano Island in Washington State. “From the lone transcendent biker riding the two-lane highway of nightmares in 1964’s Mass for the Dakota Sioux to 1970’s Quick Billy, Baillie blazed a path through nothing less than the American consciousness itself, closing the cycle with the Quixotic epigram “Ever Westward Eternal Rider!” As the admonishment warns, the journey continues, and endpoints are illusionary – only movement is of essence. –“Whither Bruce Baillie?”, Ross Lipman, 2010

  • her silent life

    A version of family. From mother, grandmother, great-grandmother to me, stories flow through our matrilineal heritage to explore the remarkable life of my Inuk great-grandmother.

  • ada

    An observational video portrait of an Inuk elder, patiently knitting. A study of the passage of time. FAVA Award for Outstanding Documentary, 2012

  • where she stood in the first place.

    Situated at the geographic centre of Canada, Baker Lake, Nunavut is the only inland settlement in the Canadian Arctic. Fixing its gaze on this stark landscape, McIntyre’s haunting and sparse film uses hand-wrought black-and-white 16mm film in a meditation on place and personal histories.

  • Class Order Family Tribe

    “Class Order Family Tribe” is a 26-minute experimental documentary about my my Native American [Ute, Apache, Pueblo] family’s shifting strategies for survival after leaving the reservation and moving to Central California in the 1950s. Moreover it is a look at heterosexuality, machismo and binary gender roles as strategies for survival and how in my new native generation queerness and gender fluidity are new forms of survival. This silent film is told exclusively through 8mm film shot by my native family in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. I insert myself into the film as a textual narrator creating a link between…