COLOUR REVERSAL Public Screening Series 001 - “WAYFINDING” Curated by Niki Little

COLOUR REVERSAL Public Screening Series 001 - “WAYFINDING” Curated by Niki Little 🎨📽️🎞️💙

• Wednesday, March 23, 2022
• 7:00 PM CST
• Mackenzie Art Gallery
• Regina, SK
• FREE Admission

“WAYFINDING” is a short films program curated by Niki Little (Producer, NFB) from the National Film Board of Canada’s catalogue. This screening features a selection of Indigenous film & video works from 1968-2020. The films speak to the endurance of Indigenous narratives, revealing explorations of Indigenous resilience practices. The program opens with one of the first Indigenous productions at the NFB, Travelling College, directed by activist/educator Ernest Benedict, a member of the Indian Film Crew (IFC). This film is a direct call to Indigenous audiences for collective resurgence and generative collaboration. The program then shifts to the reappropriation of archival footage to intentionally recount and assert Indigenous narrative. Contemporary stories make way for radical love and kinship moving through the land and language to create new pathways for Indigenous continuums and reflections of past/future selves.

Featuring works by:

• Ernest Benedict
• Caroline Monnet
• Christopher Gilbert Grant
• Kent Monkman
• Thirza Cuthand
• Elisapie Isaac
• Alexandra Lazarowich
• Rhayne Vermette
• Melaw Nakehk’o
• Asinaajaq
• Meky Ottawa

Films

Travelling College (09:00), 1968, Ernest Benedict

Produced by the Indian Film Crew (IFC) for showing to fellow Indigenous peoples across North America, this film demonstrates the concept of self-help of the Indian Travelling College, an educational venture designed to teach Indigenous students what they want to know, be it business knowledge, handicrafts or marketing of products.

Ernest Benedict was an educator, activist, chief of the Mohawk Council, and co-founder of the Native North American Travelling College. He was a member of the NFB’s Indian Film Crew.

Mobilize (03:30), 2015, Caroline Monnet

Guided expertly by those who live on the land and driven by the pulse of the natural world, Caroline Monnet’s Mobilize takes us on an exhilarating journey from the far north to the urban south. Over every landscape, in all conditions, everyday life flows with strength, skill and extreme competence. The fearless polar punk rhythms of Tanya Tagaq’s “Uja” underscore the perpetual negotiation between the modern and traditional by a people always moving forward. Produced as part of Souvenir, a four-film series addressing Indigenous identity and representation by reworking material in the NFB’s archives.

Caroline Monnet (Anishinaabe/French) is a multidisciplinary artist from Outaouais, Quebec. Monnet uses visual and media arts to demonstrate a keen interest in communicating complex ideas around Indigenous identity and bicultural living through the examination of cultural histories.

XO RAD Magical (01:27) 2019, Christopher Gilbert Grant

XO Rad Magical is a personal lyrical poem about the daily struggle of living with schizophrenia. This psychedelic and hypnotic film shows that there is beauty in the brains of those who are at war with themselves. Produced as part of the 12th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

Christopher Gilbert Grant is a young Mi’kmaq artist from the Pabineau First Nation who is living with schizoaffective disorder. He studied Fine Arts at Mount Allison and animation technique at the New Brunswick Community College and has exhibited his work regionally on the east coast.

Sisters & Brothers (03:41), 2015, Kent Monkman

A pounding critique of Canada’s colonial history, Kent Monkman’s Sisters & Brothers draws parallels between the annihilation of the bison and the devastation inflicted by the residential school system. The rhythms of Halluci Nation’s “The Road” drive home the legacy of loss and pain inflicted by more than a century of abuse and neglect. Sisters & Brothers mourn the preventable deaths of thousands of Indigenous children in residential schools while honouring the resiliency of Canada’s First Peoples. Produced as part of Souvenir, a four-film series addressing Indigenous identity and representation by reworking material in the NFB’s archives.

Kent Monkman (b. 1965) is an interdisciplinary Cree visual artist. A member of Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba), he lives and works in Dish With One Spoon Territory (Toronto, Canada).

WOMEN DRESS (06:25) 2019, Thirza Cuthand

Pre-contact, a Two Spirit person named Woman Dress travels the Plains, gathering and sharing stories. Featuring archival images and dramatized re-enactments, this film shares a Cuthand family oral story, honouring and respecting Woman Dress without imposing colonial binaries on them.

Thirza Jean Cuthand was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1978, and grew up in Saskatoon. Since 1995 she has been making short experimental narrative videos and films about sexuality, madness, Queer identity and love, and Indigeneity, which have screened in festivals internationally.

If the Weather Permits (27:51), 2003, Elisapie Isaac

In the vastness of northern Quebec, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, lies the village of Kangirsujuaq, in Nunavik. Here, tradition and modernity intersect on a daily basis. Teenagers lap up "southern" culture and play golf on the tundra. Their elders--many of them former nomads and hunters--are trying to get used to the strange feeling of staying put.

Elisapie Isaac, a young filmmaker born in Nunavik, decides to return to her roots on this breathtaking land. To bridge the growing gap between the young and the old, she lets Naalak, an elder, and Danny, a young policeman from Kangirsujuaq, tell us what they think.

She also speaks to her grandfather, now dead, and confides in him her hopes and fears. Above all, she asks the fundamental question: Can Inuit culture survive in the modern world?

Elisapie Isaac is an acclaimed Inuk singer-songwriter, broadcaster, documentary filmmaker, and activist from Salluit (Nunavik) based in Montreal.

LAKE (05:05) 2019, Alexandra Lazarowich

Cree director Alexandra Lazarowich riffs off classic verité cinema to craft a contemporary portrait of Métis women net fishing in Northern Alberta.

Alexandra Lazarowich is an award-winning Cree filmmaker originally from northern Alberta, Canada. She is passionate about telling Indigenous stories. Her body of work as a director and producer includes LAKE, JESSE JAMS, A Portrait in Red, Indian Rights for Indian Women, Out of Nothing, Cree Code Talker, Crooked Creek, Empty Metal, INAATE/SE/, Alvaro, and award-winning film Fast Horse.

U.F.O (01:27), 2016, Rhayne Vermette

An apparition reveals itself on film and transmits vestiges of a forgotten origin. Have the onlookers interpreted its signs correctly, or was the message misunderstood? Inspired by found sound that captures the discovery of a mysterious event in the sky, U.F.O. was produced as part of the 11th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship program.

Rhayne Vermette was born in Notre Dame de Lourdes, Manitoba. It was while studying architecture at the University of Manitoba, that she fell into the practices of image-making and storytelling. Primarily self-taught, Rhayne’s films are opulent collages of fiction, animation, documentary, reenactments, and divine interruption. Ste. Anne is her first feature narrative.

K'i Tah Amongst the Birch (11:00), 2020, Melaw Nakehk’o

Filmmaker/activist Melaw Nakehk’o has spent the pandemic with her family at a remote land camp in the Northwest Territories, “getting wood, listening to the wind, staying warm and dry, and watching the sun move across the sky.” In documenting camp life — activities like making fish leather and scraping moose hide — she anchors the Covid experience in a specific time and place.

Melaw Nakehko is Dehcho and Denesuline Dene and was born in Fort Simpson in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Nakehk’o is a filmmaker, activist, and visual artist who paints, sews, and beads, as well as a traditional moose hide tanner based out of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Three Thousand (14:00), 2017, Asinnajaq

My father was born in a spring igloo—half snow, half skin. I was born in a hospital, with jaundice and two teeth. Inuit artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—14 minutes of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the present, past and future of her people in a radiant new light. Diving into the NFB’s vast archive, she parses the complicated cinematic representation of the Inuit, harvesting fleeting truths and fortuitous accidents from a range of sources—newsreels, propaganda, ethnographic docs, and work by Indigenous filmmakers. Embedding historic footage into original animation, she conjures up a vision of hope and beautiful possibility.

Asinnajaq is the daughter of Carol Rowan and Jobie Weetaluktuk. She is from Inukjuak, Nunavik and lives in Tiohtià:ke. Asinnajaq wrote and directed Three Thousand (2017) a short sci-fi documentary. She co-curated Isuma’s presence in the ‘Canadian’ pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. Asinnajaq’s performance video Rock Piece (Ahuriri Edition) (2018) is currently touring in art galleries and film festivals around the world.

The Fake Calendar (01:27), 2019, Meky Ottawa

A neon glimpse into a personal world within an urban landscape. From FOMO to JOMO, The Fake Calendar is an artist’s expression of how people come up with interesting and creative ways to avoid social functions in favour of their own private space. Produced as part of the 12th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

Born in Manawan (QC), Meky Ottawa is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist based in Montreal (Tiohtià:ke). Inspired by her Atikamekw origins, feminist perspective and urban life, she works with video, illustration and immersive installations to create compositions that are often politically engaged.

Niki Little is a Producer at the National Film Board, the North West Studio, which produces and coproduces documentary works with filmmakers from across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. She is of Anishininew (Oji-Cree)/British descent from Kistiganwacheeng (Garden Hill FN, MB), based in Winnipeg. For over 12 years, Little has been an art and cultural worker producing large creative projects through an Indigenous and community-based lens. From 2019 to 2021, she was the Artistic Director at imagineNATIVE (Toronto), the world’s largest presenter of Indigenous screen content.

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Mackenzie Art Gallery

National Film Board of Canada