imagineNATIVE Film Festival

Program & Schedule

Film & Video / New Media / Radio / Installations / Artists / Film Index / Print Source Index
All new media works are exhibited at the Native Canadian Centre, October 20 - 23


The West Was Lost
http://www.zeros2heroes.com/content/comic/view/id/808303
Elizabeth Lameman
Canada, 2009, Online Interactive Comic Book

The West Was Lost is an experimental, non-linear graphic novel which was developed by Zeros 2 Heroes after winning the Comic Creation Nation: APTN Contest. Nezette is the leader of The Sovereign, a group of Indigenous warriors who are determined to rid the west of the intruding Zhaagnaash people. With their land threatened, Nezette leads her people in resistance by putting flame to the oil wells polluting their territories. But Nezette must also face her own inner demons, including the Windigo inside her.

Elizabeth Lameman (Irish/Anishnaabe/Métis) is a writer whose work addresses Indigenous determination in media such as video games, films and web comics. She is focusing on her dissertation, which looks at Indigenous oral storytelling to inform the design of video games.

5
http://5.paulwongprojects.com/five.html
Archer Pechawis
Canada, 2010, Experimental website

Artist Archer Pechawis created this flash site as part of multimedia artist Paul Wong’s 5, a series of five site-specific events that took place during the Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games in Vancouver. The 5 unique productions took the public on extraordinary journeys through real, invented and imagined places, and showcased the work of dozens of artists including Rebecca Belmore, Dana Claxton, Skeena Reese and John Greyson.

Performance artist, new media artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and educator, Archer Pechawis (Cree) was born in Alert Bay, BC in 1963. He has been a practicing artist since 1984, with particular interest in the intersection of Plains Cree culture and digital technology, often merging "traditional" objects such as hand drums with “forward engineered” devices such as Mac PowerBooks. His work has been exhibited across Canada and featured in publications such as Fuse Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review. Archer has been the recipient of many Canada Council and British Columbia Arts awards, and won the Best New Media Award at imagineNATIVE in 2007 and Best Experimental Short at imagineNATIVE in 2009.

La Promenade de la Citadelle
http://www.chambreblanche.qc.ca/documents/stephenfoster/
Stephen Foster
Canada, 2010, Interactive Website

Using video and interactive photography of the graffiti that adorns (some would say vandalizes) the walls and monuments around Quebec City, this interactive new media work meditates on the history of the “Old City.” While official monuments celebrate the past and inspire us with shared ideals, they are also a means of expressing and propagating dominant myths and official historical narratives. They are intended to bolster the power of the state through heroic imagery while suppressing or distorting alternative interpretations of history. The graffiti in these spaces is in part an act of (re)claiming a space or place for personal expression within a public forum. This type of expression is marginalized and even criminalized within our society, but it is not uncommon for people to claim this space and express their views through these acts of public intervention.

Stephen Foster is a video and electronic media artist of mixed Haida and European background. His work deals with issues of Indigenous representation in popular culture through personal narrative and documentary. He has exhibited both internationally and nationally and is a sought after lecturer and panellist on interactive documentary and Canadian contemporary Indigenous art. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Creative Studies Department at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan, where he instructs courses dedicated to video production, digital media and visual theory.

Truth, Dare, Double Dare
http://www.kcadams.net/tddd
KC Adams
Canada, 2010, Interactive Mobile Website

Mobile: tddd.kcadams.net
Facebook: /kcadams/tddd

Like the childhood game, the viewer is given three choices: Truth, Dare or Double Dare. A random instruction is pulled from a database that challenges the viewer to participate with the environment around them. For Truth, you may be told to ‘Order a drink at a bar and tell the bartender about your first drunk experience,’ ‘Tell your partner/friend some constructive criticism.’ For Dare, perhaps ‘pet the next dog you encounter,’ or ‘turn to the person beside you in transit and point out something that is thought-provoking.’ If you choose Double Dare, it may be ‘start dancing on the spot, whether you hear music or not,’ or ‘stop a random stranger and tell them how stunning their eyes are’.

Are you ready for the challenge?

Winnipeg-based artist KC Adams graduated from Concordia University with a BFA. Her focus has been the investigation of the relationship between nature (the living) and technology (progress). She works in mediums that include sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, ceramics, printmaking and kinetic art. She maintains her own website at www.kcadams.net, showcasing her work and flash art projects. Adams’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, and is held in major collections.

Otsì:! Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legends
http://otsi.abtec.org
Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC)
Canada, 2010, Video Game

Otsì:! Rise of the Kanien’kehá:ka Legends is the “boss” level of a video game. In it, you take on the role of an Iroquois hunter and must save your village from a horrible monster, the Flying Head. You must make your way across a dark and brooding pre-contact landscape, besting creatures from various Mohawk stories along the way. Each of these creatures tells its own story; some help you, some hinder you. Once you make it to your village, you must use the information you have gathered from the characters on your journey to vanquish the Fly- ing Head. Can you listen, learn and fight well enough to do it? Otsì:! was developed by Mohawk students during a year-long pilot workshop called Skins, given by Aborigi- nal Territories in Cyberspace in collaboration with the senior art class at the Kahnawake Survival School and Obx Labs at Concordia University.

Aboriginal Territories in Cyberspace (AbTeC), led by Jason E. Lewis (Cherokee/Hawaiian) and Skawennati Fragnito (Mohawk), is a network of academics, artists and technologists whose goal is to define and share conceptual and practical tools that will allow us to create new, Aboriginally-determined territories within the web-pages, online games and virtual environments that we call cyberspace. Tehoniehtáthe Delisle is a young man from Kahnawake. He wove all the old stories into the new one being told in Otsì:! He also wrote the cut scene narrative and helped texture the longhouses. Kahéntawaks Tiewishaw, a young woman from Kanehsatake, designed and modelled the hunter and the Flying Head. Both are currently enrolled in CEGEP. The workshop was created to teach Indigenous youth a multitude of skills related to video game production while at the same time encouraging them to develop game concepts, characters and mechanics based on their own culture.