June 2018
Film screening for Listen, Witness, Transmit the Independent Media Arts Association & National Indigenous Media Arts Council 2018 Conference
Wanuskewin Hertiage Park Galleries, Saskatoon, SK.
The videos and films chosen for this screening explore the themes of revival and resistance, of Indigenous art and culture and Canada’s colonial history. A history of institutional erasure where it was believed, that “Indian arts… survive only as ghosts or shadows of a dead society.” [1]
The proliferation of video technology has allowed these artists to reclaim and explore aspects of their culture that has been lost, but not forgotten. Dance, language, connection to the land, and traditional stories are all explored in films as well as Indigenous futures. These films loudly declare that Indigenous people are not dead, we have always been here, and will always be here.
Films included in the screening
The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets (2017), Adam and Zach Khalil
When the Buffalo Come (2004), Cherie Valentina Stocken
Repercussions (2013), Terril Calder
Birchbark (2008), John Hupfield
Written in My Blood (2016), Steven Davies
Wakening (2013), Danis Goulet
Creatura Dada (2016), Caroline Monnet
Notes
[1] France Trépanier and Chris Creighton-Kelly, Understanding Aboriginal Arts in Canada Today: A Knowledge and Literature Review (Ottawa: Canada Council for the Arts, 2011), 55.