A Decade in Retrospect
10 Years of Dramatic Programming at imagineNATIVE
Friday, Oct 16 2009, 3:00PM
Al Green Theatre
Honey Blood Runner and Skins Bear Prayer with Cherry Bones Winter and Skyway Wind America
This program looks at 12 films that have been screened at the festival in celebration of imagineNATIVE’s 10th anniversary. These dramatic works are part of the burgeoning field of dramatic Aboriginal screen culture and they are exciting, unpredictable and thoughtful. Storylines are varied: Indians playing Whites, Pine Ridge disasters, bad medicine and hope, young girls and prayer, drugs and visions, giants and little people, spirits in the bush, dead guitar heroes, Cufe and burial proper, and unpacking the residential/boarding school tragedy. These works represent what is going on in Aboriginal thought and creative applications of that thought. Together the works span a decade of Indigenous production and during this time there have been several other dramatic projects made, far too many to include in this program. As you will see in this program, Aboriginal cultural producers are fully engaged with dramatic narratives and bringing Indigenous life to the screen. These stories interpret contemporary life as well as the complex and difficult history that makes up North America.
Dana Claxton works in film, video, photography, multi channel installation, performance, curation, aboriginal broadcasting and pedagogy. Her work has been shown internationally and held in many public collections including the National Gallery of Canada. She has received numerous awards including the VIVA Award and the Eiteljorg Fellowship. She has presented papers at the Getty Institute, Mid-American Art College Association and the Art College Association (US). She is the Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair in Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University and her art work has been selected for the 17th Biennale of Sydney 2010.
1998, Canada, 47 min, Beta SP
Director: Shelley Niro
This all-Native production by director Shelley Niro (Mohawk), is part of the Smoke Signals new wave of films that examined Native identity in the 1990s.
2000, Canada, 23 min
Director: Kent Monkman
Rose (Jennifer Podemski), a hip Native Law student, can barely tolerate her well-meaning but clueless adoptive mother (Tantoo Cardinal).
The Fast Runner
2001, Canada, 172 min, Beta SP
Director: Zacharias Kunuk
Evil in the form of an unknown shaman divides a small community of nomadic Inuit, upsetting its balance and spirit. Twenty years pass. Two brothers emerge to challenge the evil order: Amaqjuaq, the Strong One, and Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner.
2001, Canada, 83 min, Beta SP
Director: Dr. Shirley Cheechoo
Bearwalker is the story of a supernatural force at work in a small community where prejudice, injustice, corruption and revenge are simmering just below the surface.
2001, USA, 87 min, Beta SP
Director: Chris Eyre
Skins is a 2002 feature film by Chris Eyre based on the novel of the same name by Adrian C. Louis. The film is set on the fictional Beaver Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota near the Nebraska border, a place very much like the actual Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, the setting in the book and the place where the film was actually shot
2003, Canada, 12 min, Beta SP
Director: Zoe Leigh Hopkins
A young girl constantly offering prayers for good days guides her father through his numbness.
2004, Canada, 10 min, Beta SP
Director: Jeff Barnaby
From Cherry English is a surrealist Mi’gMaq allegory about the loss of language and identity to the anonymity of an urban wasteland.
2004, Canada, 21 min, Beta SP
Director: Travis Shilling
Offering a humourous nod to the Western, this is a film for anyone who has ever taken a jounrey into unknown territory.
2005, Canada, 24 min 5 sec, Beta SP
Director: Paul M. Rickard
A young Cree man ventures to an unknown region of his father’s trapline and meets Pakaaskokan, the last remaining supernatural being of its kind.
2006, Canada, 21 min 5 sec, Beta SP
Director: Randy Redroad
As his health fails, a homeless man endeavours to get his guitar out of hock, relying on a troubled friend and the kindness of a lonely pawn shop employee.
2007, USA, 84 min 5 sec, Beta SP
Director: Sterlin Harjo
Beautifully crafted and set under gorgeous Oklahoma skies, this poignant and wryly funny story of family and healing begins the morning of Cufe Smallhill (Cody Lightning) finds his father quieter than usual, an empty bottle of pills at his side.
2008, USA, 102 min, Beta SP
Director: Georgina Lightning
A woman’s haunting visions reveal a Catholic priest’s sinister plot to silence her mother from speaking the truth about the atrocities that occurred at a Native American boarding school.
