Tag: Native Spirit

The spirit of Indigenous cinema arrives in London!

Posted on by victorfraga

For nine days, nearly 100 movies made by Indigenous filmmakers in every corner of the planet will be showcased in a variety of London venues. They include Nigerian Yoruba, Filipino T’boli, Yakutian horsebreeders from Russia, and a even a very transgressive Indiqueer Canadian Cree filmmaker. Many artists will attend the Festival, showcase their work, and debate the challenges of Indigenous life and filmmaking with an enthusiastic audience of Indigenous people, activists, researchers and film lovers in general. The action kicks off on Saturday, October 12th, Indigenous Peoples’ Day in the US.

Native Spirit Film Festival was founded by Mapuche filmmaker Freddy Treuquil in 2005. It is the UK’s first and only independent annual festival promoting contemporary Indigenous Cinema, MediaMakers and Artists and are event participants with Unesco International Year of Indigenous languages.

Below are the some of the most important Festival highlights. Click on the titles in order to accede to the individual reviews. You can see the full programme either on our calendar, on Native Spirit’s Facebook page or Eventbrite, where you can also purchase your ticket.

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1. Thirza Cuthand Retrospective:

Thirza Jean Cuthand was born in Saskatchewan and grew up in Saskatoon, and she is of Cree origin. Starting in 1995, Cuthand began exploring short experimental narrative videos and films about sexuality, madness, youth, love, and race, using national, sexual and Indigenous experiences to showcase in unfiltered raw exteriors.

Make no mistake, there is purity at play here. Collecting the confines, conditions and contractions of Cuthand’s milieu, the varied works slip together into one continuous narrative written years, even decades, apart. More to the point, the essays cross genres from the pointedly visual into the realms of performance arts.

Don’t forget to check our exclusive interview with Thirza Cuthand by clicking here!

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2. K’Na Dreamweaver (Ida Anita Del Mundo, 2015):

Young T’boli princess K’Na (Mara Lopez) finds herself trapped in an undesirable dilemma, as she has to balance realising her personal dreams with her duties as a village dream-weaver. Chosen by her town-folk to fill the vacant position, K’na is freighted with delivering visions through colourful abaca fibres. Tied to the boughs that hold her village afloat, K’na fancies the courtship from the broad-shouldered Silaw (RK Bagatsing), before Royal duties divide her impressionable intentions from her personal. The tribes follow tradition with the punishing reverence of survival, but K’na and Silaw share some moments of unbridled flirtation. Animalistic in their desire, their collegiality needs to be subdued.

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3. 24 Snow (Mikhail Barynin, 2019):

The highs and lows of extreme rural living are expertly depicted in 24 Snow, a documentary that dives into life in one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Alternating scenes of natural beauty with a down-to-earth character portrait of an middle-aged Yakut horse breeder, it celebrates traditional forms of living while lamenting their slow erosion to the forces of modernisation.

Sergey Loukin’s story takes place in the area around Sakkyryr, Russia, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, where temperatures regularly plummet below minus fifty degrees. It’s so cold in the winter that sheets of ice cling to the horse’s fur and must be removed with axes, and reindeer and husky-pulled sleds remain the only form of transportation. There is no electricity, no internet and no shops for miles around. Sergei must make do with his immediate surroundings alone. We follow him for around a year, from snow to summer to snow again.

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4. Etienne Charles’s Docushorts:

Jazz creole artist Etienne Charles is one of the genre’s most inventive musicians, garnering acclaim for three impressive and well-received albums for his own Culture Shock Music imprint. A man still in his twenties, Charles understands the vitality and power Creole music holds on those who listen to it, inviting audiences to see, listen and feel the music he espouses on a daily basis. His style of raw playing has been hailed hailed by The New York Times as “an auteur” and by Jazz Times as “a daring improviser who delivers with heart wrenching lyricism”.

Through a trilogy of short films, Charles shows the beauty Trinidad holds in both its visual and musical form. Charles’ blend of improvisation and first-class musicianship has an infectious quality that attracts fans of all ages. The films capture the artists pure spontaneity, thriving and diving through the Trinidad streets.

Etienne Charles’s docushorts

Posted on by victorfraga

Jazz creole artist Etienne Charles is one of the genre’s most inventive musicians, garnering acclaim for three impressive and well-received albums for his own Culture Shock Music imprint. A man still in his twenties, Charles understands the vitality and power Creole music holds on those who listen to it, inviting audiences to see, listen and feel the music he espouses on a daily basis. His style of raw playing has been hailed hailed by The New York Times as “an auteur” and by Jazz Times as “a daring improviser who delivers with heart wrenching lyricism”.

Through a trilogy of short films, Charles shows the beauty Trinidad holds in both its visual and musical form. Charles’ blend of improvisation and first-class musicianship has an infectious quality that attracts fans of all ages. The films capture the artists pure spontaneity, thriving and diving through the Trinidad streets.Those of a cynical disposition might not regard the films as much more than “how to” television manuals, but there is a vestige of biting humour which merits the viewing of these films. And at least the music sounds stellar, which is more than you could say about a One Direction film!

To the many unversed in cultivated Caribbean culture, opening film Carnival the Sound of a People (Research) proves a tasty photograph, as an assemblage of clips shows a city dancing to the tribal appetisers of his trumpet playing. His mantras and manouevres incorporate the rhythms from the French, Spanish, English and Dutch speaking Caribbean formats in one salty menage. Music is often used as an act of rebellion and Bamboo opens with a title card reminding viewers of the terror British Colonial Rule threw down on the masquerade bands of 1884. Tumbling and towering the drums shimmer through the soundwaves, as a conflate of images show the power the percussive instruments still hold centuries later. For once these films seem frustratingly short, yet dissuade the view that drums and movies do not mix.

Which is where Jab Molaisse comes in, tying the triumvirate together in a cross cut patio of pop videography. Blue painted drummers begin the tribal rhythms that cuts from musician to musician with transcendental fusion. Together, the jive style silhouettes flips from percussive precision as the film speeds without dialogue, a six minute video of clever cuts and cross-shapes. In its own way, the films speak to each other with the sweet music that melodically sings in the listeners ear. So, a bit more than a trio of “how to” manuals!

Etienne Charles’s Docushorts shows on October 12th at 17:00 at the Soas Brunei Theatre, as part of the Native Spirit Festival. Grab your ticket now here!

K’Na Dreamweaver

Posted on by victorfraga

K‘na (Mara Lopez) finds herself trapped in an undesirable dilemma, as she has to balance realising her personal dreams with her duties as a village dream-weaver. Chosen by her town-folk to fill the vacant position, K’na is freighted with delivering visions through colourful abaca fibres. Tied to the boughs that hold her village afloat, K’na fancies the courtship from the broad-shouldered Silaw (RK Bagatsing), before Royal duties divide her impressionable intentions from her personal. The tribes follow tradition with the punishing reverence of survival, but K’na and Silaw share some moments of unbridled flirtation. Animalistic in their desire, their collegiality needs to be subdued.

In a pastoral pillowed story, the naturalistic setting suits the dogma narrative on display. Director Ida Anita Del Mundo’s work recalls the spiritual chronicles Martin Scorsese detailed in hieratic Kundun (1997) and the sacramental Silence (2017), though it lacks the directorial interpolations Scorsese steeped into the decelerated epics. What the film offers are moments of stark provincial reflection as the film opens with a mother dying with the baby she pushes to life. Harrowing, the mood devastates the surroundings, as K’na surrounds herself in the duties she is groomed to follow. A strong command of story makes up for the stiff visual content, much of it annoyingly soft focused on the indigenous Tboli family.

They are a family who deserve better film treatment, powerful as they are in the wars they fight with their rivals. K’na, in her new found position, has the opportunity to bring peace to a land that has seen little of it. In an intense, fierce, personal drama put across by an outstanding lead from Lopez, viewers are led on a journey summoned its unwillingness to pin itself down to one aspect of the character’s dilemma. In a battle so wedged in sorrow and love, K’na must decide between marrying for duty or love. The battle scenes, sloppy in their choreography, pale in their ambition to Lopez’s stellar acting as she winces in combustible agony, unbeknownst to her nuclear family.

Outside the wooden houses, a solitary camera floats over a deluge of water waded greenery, Lake Sebu’s rural majesty simmering under the wooden paddles that sail her. In a drapery of natural shots, the surrounding collage of the Philippines contrasts the pain K’na feels. Willowy, wooden and unworried, the scenery keeps the viewer’s eye afloat just as Lopez keeps it memorable.

K’Na Dreamweaver shows on Saturday, October 12th at the Soas Brunei Theatre. Just click here in order to book your ticket!

Our dirty questions to Thirza Cuthand

Posted on by victorfraga

Born in Regina and raised in Saskatoon, in the South-Central Canadian province of Saskatchewan, Thirza isn’t your average Indigenous filmmaker. This Cree artist has been making audacious and experimental short movies since 1995 delving into the topics of LGBT sexuality and identify, while also questioning and toying with the boundaries sanity. Her work fits in very well with our dirty movie concept.

She graduated in Film in the Emily Carr University of Art and Design of Vancouver in 2005. She has since exhibited her work in numerous galleries, festivals and events in various countries and on both sides of the Atlantic. She currently resides in Toronto. She’s now in London for the 13th Native Spirit Festival in order to showcase a selection of her work carefully picked exclusively for you.

Thirza Cuthand presents her retrospective of 10 short films at the Horse Hospital in London at 14:00 on Sunday, October 13th. The screenings will be followed by a talk. Click here for our review of the superb retrospective, and here in order to book your tickets now.

Victor Fraga – How did you first become involved in film? Were you the first Cree filmmaker ever, or was there a tradition beforehand?

Thirza Cuthand – There were other Cree filmmakers, I’m thinking like Loretta Todd, my Uncle Doug Cuthand makes films, there’s been a number of Cree filmmakers I can’t even think of them all. I find Cree women filmmakers were very encouraging when I was an emerging filmmaker. Actually many other Indigenous women filmmakers were very nurturing of my skills. My friend Dana Claxton was really great to connect with when I was starting out, she is a Lakota filmmaker based in Vancouver. I first became involved in film through a Queer film festival in Saskatoon called Virtuous Reality. It only ever happened once in 1995. Since then Saskatoon got obsessed with But I’m A Cheerleader (Jamie Babbit, 2001) and I swear that’s the only Queer film they wanna watch.

I made a short film called Lessons In Baby Dyke Theory (1995, see it below) about feeling like the only lesbian at my high school. I was 16 when I made it, with a cheap hi-8 camcorder. And a lot of pipe cleaner dollies. It became really successful on the Queer film fest circuit because there was not a lot of work being made about being a teenage Queer. Mostly when people talked about Queer Youth at the time they were picturing university students. But now of course there’s like, Queer kindergarteners so things have really shifted.

VF – How have the indigenous communities embraced Indigiqueer identity? Did you have to overcome tradition, or barriers of any type?

TC – It’s been varied. I grew up in urban communities which I found were way more open minded than if I had grown up on a reserve. But then also all the reserves have different climates. Some are more Christian and Christian-influenced than others. I was fortunate in that my mother was very Queer-positive so there wasn’t a lot of hardships at home, and my high school didn’t even know what to do with me. I do know that one of the barriers has been funding. I do get funding but usually it comes from the regular funding stream and not the stream for Indigenous people at the arts councils.

There’s also some difficulties in that people want to protect Indigenous culture so I feel like there’s a fine line between protecting ourselves and censoring artists. I know the queer work I make is not always appreciated by some of those juries, especially the more sexually suggestive work. I think repression of Indigenous sexuality in all its forms, including heterosexual sexuality, has been a big issue for us as media makers. And when it’s Queer on top of that, it gets really tough. The effects of Residential School has left a huge vein of homophobia and transphobia in its wake. I have a hard time with it, because I do understand people who have been abused by same sex perpetrators sort of view Queer society through that lens, but at the same time child sexual abuse is not Queer culture and it’s hard to explain that to some survivors of those crimes.

VF – How do you transpose oral storytelling onto cinema? Is it any difference from written literature? What are the biggest challenges, and the most beautiful and unique aspects?

TC – My videos are often told in a similar manner to the way my grandfather would tell stories his parents and grandparents would tell him, like a monologue with a sort of larger meaning attached. Cree stories can be very funny, and some can be very sexually explicit too (although I never heard those ones from my grandpa but there is a well known story about a rolling disembodied head that keeps trying to offer sexual favours as it follows this person). I think the difference from written literature is that oral stories grow and change with time, they are living texts. It’s harder to do that with videos, but I also do performance art and that can work the same way. I think the biggest challenges are that I can’t see how people react to a story until the film is finished and I’m watching with an audience. While an oral story you might be able to read the room and like, drop parts that don’t work for that audience. Like maybe there are people like your family in the room who you don’t want to tell that part about a disembodied head offering blowjobs in front of!

The beautiful and unique aspects are that a story could be passed down from generations and generations previously. I heard a story from my grandfather about the first time Crees saw white people, and I am still struck by how remarkable it is to know what happened. I also recently made a film based on another story he told my auntie Beth about a 2 Spirit person (2 Spirit is a term for Queer/Trans Indigenous people used by some Queer/Trans Indigenous people) who was a travelling storyteller, and it was really wonderful to not only be able to make that story more widely known as a film, but also to sort of have proof that 2 Spirit people were accepted and welcomed before colonisation. Oral stories give us a history that has been used to stand up in court cases here in Canada.

VF – You said that “humour is a political tool”. Can you please give us an example of how you used comedy in order to make a statement, raise awareness of an issue, or something else?

TC – My film series 2 Spirit Introductory Special $19.99 (2015) and 2 Spirit Dreamcatcher Dot Com (2017) are very comedic films, but also use the tropes of late night TV commercial formats to critique things like domestic violence in lesbian relationships, isolation in remote communities as a Queer person, capitalist values based on how big your communities are and if you are worth having media targeted towards your demographics. A lot of other things too. But mostly they come across as very light fun films. You don’t think about the heavy stuff even though it’s all in there. I think humour helps people be more open to ideas that they might shut down otherwise.

VF – Has the Canadian government been supportive of indigenous film and performance art? Who has supported you in your endeavours?

TC – I’ve gotten funding from almost all levels of government, federal, provincial, municipal. I have been fortunate. I’ve seen other people really struggle but I’ve managed to carve out enough of a career for myself that I’ve been able to be a full time artist. I’ve also made a documentary for CBC Gem, which is a national tv streaming platform, and for the NFB which is a national documentary and animation film studio. But it took a long time of making self-funded videos with my camcorder and myself to get to that point. I think the fact I was so willing to fund so much of my early work really helped my career. I still self-fund the work I think might be too controversial for a funder to touch. There have been some controversies over the years about where taxpayer money goes, so any really sexual work I’ve tried to do on my own.

VF – You describe yourself as “gender non-conforming, Indigenous, Queer, disabled, fat”. Is being non-normative an empowering and liberating experience? How do you reconcile these varied identities?

TC – I think when you rack up a couple of non-normative identities it just makes sense to add more! Ha ha! I think because my identities and interests are outside of the mainstream, it’s made my work more interesting. It can be empowering, there’s been at least a couple times I’ve been trying to find the subcultures I belong to and that is an interesting experience. When I was a teen I had to find the Queer community, and in a small prairie city too, before the internet was a thing and before I was old enough for the bar. So it didn’t take a long time, but I did have to go out looking for it.

And then when I was 18, again without the the internet, I realised I was into kink and that was another search. I think my first contact was getting a subscription to a local kink newsletter, but it stopped distributing as soon as I got the first issue! But it really does make you more independent in a way when you need to work hard at finding your communities, queer and kinky communities. My Indigenous communities were always around because I grew up with my Indigenous family members. But even reconciling Queer and kink identities even just with Indigenous identity is not so hard. There were always Queer Indigenous people, and some ceremonies involved cutting or piercing the flesh, so doing similar things in a kink context is not so wild really. And same with trans/gender-non-conforming identities, there were lots of Indigenous people historically who were gender non-conforming or trans. I think what I like about all these identities is that I can talk honestly from a first person perspective about a lot of issues.

VF – You were once invited to Bruce LaBruce’s Tiff party. He’s one of our favourite “dirty” filmmakers. Did you meet and talk to him? How did that go? What did he think of Indigiqueer film?

TC – I actually didn’t go! I ended up finishing my film about a gas mask fetish I later called Less Lethal Fetishes instead. But I did meet him once at his screening in Regina for LA Zombie (2010), which I loved. Fucking dead people back to life? Amazing! I did talk to him, he seems very nice. We didn’t talk long enough to talk about Indigiqueer film tho!

VF – Is this your first time in Europe? Do Europeans react differently to your work?

TC – I’ve been to Berlin a lot showing my work. I think because Europeans don’t have the full understanding of Indigenous culture and context like people in North America, it’s a little bit different showing work here. There are I am sure preconceived ideas of what Indigenous lives are like, I’ve never talked to Europeans about that though and I think mostly they don’t want to say anything offensive to me about what they might think. I do know I explained payments that were made to Residential School survivors were called “Common Experience Payments” to an audience in Berlin that was pretty queer and open-minded and they sort of recoiled which I think is the best reaction, Common Experience Payments is a terrible name. My grandmother was in Residential School and she said once “They weren’t common experiences! Everyone’s experience was different!”

VF – What are your plans for the future?

TC – I’m working on a feature film about a woman with the power of pyrokinesis [the ability to create and control fire with the mind] who seeks vengeance after her lover and mother go missing, so that’s been exciting. I have wanted to make a feature for a long time. I still really love experimental shorts though, and you can make those so fast with so much less influence from producers and editors and so on that I will probably keep doing that as well. I have a performance coming up in Vancouver called The Future Is So Bright which is going to be audio of me reading love letters to various women trying to convince them to be with me and start a family, while footage of climate change catastrophes like forest fires and glaciers melting and hurricanes and tsunami’s play behind me. And I’ll be licking and sticking hard candies to my nude body trying to sweeten the deal. I’m super interested in the feelings of the world ending that so many have right now. I want to be hopeful, but I am also aware we have an incredible responsibility to the future of humanity and the world right now and we could blow it!

24 Snow

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

The highs and lows of extreme rural living are expertly depicted in 24 Snow, a documentary that dives into life in one of the most inhospitable places on earth. Alternating scenes of natural beauty with a down-to-earth character portrait of an middle-aged Yakut horse breeder, it celebrates traditional forms of living while lamenting their slow erosion to the forces of modernisation.

Sergey Loukin’s story takes place in the area around Sakkyryr, Russia, one of the coldest inhabited places on earth, where temperatures regularly plummet below minus fifty degrees. It’s so cold in the winter that sheets of ice cling to the horse’s fur and must be removed with axes, and reindeer and husky-pulled sleds remain the only form of transportation. There is no electricity, no internet and no shops for miles around. Sergei must make do with his immediate surroundings alone. We follow him for around a year, from snow to summer to snow again.

There is something very satisfying and empowering even in watching someone dedicate themselves to a simpler, less encumbered way of life. It’s evident that director Mikhail Baryin feels the same way. Stunning cinematography of the Russian Taiga — replete with endless snowy plains, misty mountains and huge lakes — give Sergey’s work a mythical vibe, as if his life is untouched by time itself.

But times are changing, Sergey deliberately framed with his cowboy hat and leather jacket like he’s the last hurrah of the old school. His eldest children have left for the city, earning plenty more than the mere 5,000 roubles (£61.79) he says he earns a month. Sergei knows he could earn more money working elsewhere, but its evident that nothing beats the rush of horse breeding or being so close to nature. He is also often estranged from his family for long periods of time: he says he left his daughter while she was starting to laugh and came back to see her starting to walk.

This is the price he pays for his life, which he accepts with both grace and a touch of regret. He knows he is an outlier, even for the Indigenous Yakut people, yet it is this very extremity that seems to be its own reward. Baryin finds ways to express this in both deeply dramatic ways, such as an epic horse herd crossing a vast river, and the perfectly simple; after cutting grass all day, he lies down and takes a nap, his exhausted expression the very picture of contentment. A likeable, talkative narrator, he warmly invites us into his life, regaling us with anecdotes and minuscule details, expertly communicating the sheer joy he finds in his work.

And there are certain moments that seem to place us right there alongside him. Cinematographer Mikhail Kardashevski rigs his camera on top of racing horses, travelling reindeer and the back of trucks, immersing us in Sergey’s journey across this vast, gorgeous, desolate landscape. Although we probably wouldn’t last a day in Sergey’s winter, rare films like 24 Snow give us the opportunity to imagine, ever-so-briefly, that we could. A truly transportive experience.

24 Snow shows on October 15th as part of the 13th Native Spirit Festival. Just click here for more information.

London is in high spirits!!!

Posted on by victorfraga

They are black, they are aboriginal and they are queer. They are the new Queens of the Desert. Six Aboriginal drag queens (one of which is pictured above) will open up the 12th Native Spirit Film Festival, as the Australian documentary Black Divaz kick-starts the event. The action takes place between October 11th and 21st in Bloomsbury (Central London).

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The event includes more than 50 films from all continents, more than half directed by Indigenous filmmakers. The event will also include a number of talks and debates. Artists and speakers include: Ingrid Pumayalla (Peru), Greta Morton Elangué (Indigenous Australian) and founder of the Festival of Indigenous Australian Cinema in Paris), Jules Koostachin (Cree, Canada), Red Haircrow (Chiricahua Apachean award-winning writer), Suming Rupi (Amis-Taiwanese singer and songwriter), Ado’ Kaliting Pacidal (Amis, Taiwan), Lin Guo-ting (Amis, Taiwan), Sara Kautolonga (Tonga), Peiman Zekavat (Director of Timbo) and Alex Browning (African Diaspora).

There will also be an exhibition held at The Crypt entitled Life Blood, featuring Cara Romero Photography in collaboration with Bloomsbury Festival’s theme Activists and Architects of Change.

Check out the most important highlights from the event below, and don’t forget to check out the full programme and book your ticket (many of the screenings are free) right here!

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TOP FILM PICKS

1. Black Divaz (Adrian Russell Wills, 2018):

Crystal Love takes to the stage, gargantuan in gown and appearance. Describing herself as a whale, Love refers to the audience as a bunch of “cunts”. It’s a hysterical moment in a series of moments which details the empowerment a Drag Queen Pageant can bring to a person. Love admits later of being reinvigorated, while Isla refers to the transformation as one which changes their attitude from being masculine to more girly more easily. Behind the costumes, flowing hair and choreography is the story of empowerment, invigoration and humanity, all told with the cheekiest of tongues.

Click here for our review of Black Divaz and here for the exclusive interview with the filmmaker Andrew Russell Wills (an Aboriginal LGBT man himself).

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2. Burkinabe Rising (Lara Lee, 2017):

Politics and art mix in Burkinabè Rising, a deep dive into the way culture informs, comments upon and even provokes societal change. Looking at how Burkina Faso has changed since the popular uprising of 2014, it is a sprawling mosaic of a movie that seems to take in the whole country in its generous, inquisitive approach.

The key event is the 2014 ousting of Blaise Compaoré, considered by many to have led the country over the past 27 years in an undemocratic fashion. He took over from the pan-African revolutionary Thomas Sankara, who is widely considered to be Africa’s answer to Che Guevara (for one thing, he sells as many T-shirts in that region). More an African icon than a mere Burkinabé mortal, the spirit of Sankara is constantly evoked in this restless look at the country’s contemporary art and culture.

Click here for our review of the film.

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3. It’s Been a Long Time (Laha Mebow, 2017):

Two Taiwanese aboriginal musicians Suming and Baobu, are invited to New Caledonia, by the Director for a trip. During this voyage, they made friends with local Kanak musician, played music, lived together, and sometimes composed together. A film about language barriers and music´s ability to cross cultural differences.

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4. Suming Carrying the Flag (Jau-Horne Sen, 2017):

Suming, a young Amis man from eastern Taiwan, is part of the first generation of Indigenous people forced to lose their native language. Singing in the Amis language, Suming has worked his way to the forefront of Taiwan’s popular music scene, while simultaneously leading the Indigenous (Amis) youth to rediscover their tribal identity and uniting his people behind the creation of Amis Music Festival.

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5. 7th Generation (John L Voth, 2017):

The film is about Oglala Lakota tribal member Jim Warne’s efforts in helping Tribal Nations find a way to succeed in a contemporary American system and still remain Indian at heart.

After the Wounded Knee Massacre a Lakota medicine man named Black Elk had a prophecy, “It will take 7 generations to heal our sacred hoop.”

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6. Yvy Maraey (Juan Carlos Valvidia, 2013):

A well-off metropolitan filmmaker hoping to retrace the trail of an early Swedish documentarian travels to the Bolivian highlands in search of savages. Once there, however, he finds his privileged cultural position met with ire more often than awe. Including allusions to documentary classics like Nanook of the North, Valdivia’s film moves beyond the plot itself to probe larger questions of memory, the politics of representation, and the power of cinema.

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7. Forget Winnetou: Loving the Wrong Way (Red Haircrow, 2018):

It may be the only film of its kind, for we explore the roots of racism and colonialism, apathy and adoration in German society from Native perspectives and through their experiences. Germany is a microcosm of struggles taking place across the world both against and for decolonization, and the correction of systematic racism and white supremacy that’s still dividing and destroying our world.

Click here for more information about the film.

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8. PLACEenta (Jules Koostachin, 2017):

Jules sets out to find a place for her Cree Nation traditional placenta ceremony.

Meet the man behind the Black Divaz

Posted on by victorfraga

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]o you know what it feels like to be an Aboriginal drag queen? Well, you are about to find out. In the documentary Black Divaz, which opens the upcoming Native Spirit Film Festival (taking place between October 11th and 21st), six fantastic Aboriginal drag queens compete for the title of Miss First Nation pageant in Australia. The new queens of the desert are called Nova Gina, Isla Fuk Yah, Crystal Love, Josie Baker, Jojo and Shaniqua.

We have taken the opportunity to chat to the film director Adrian Russell Wills, an LGBTI Aboriginal man himself. He talks about the prejudice that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders people face (sadly, he argues that it’s increasing), challenging taboos, how cinema has helped to voice and to liberate a marginalised community, and why every single one of us should live out our lives at full throttle and full volume!

Don’t forget to click here and get your ticket right now!

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Victor Fraga – How was Black Divaz born? Where did the idea/impetus come from?

Adrian Wills Russell – Black Divaz was born from an initial call out on Facebook for expressions of interest to compete in the inaugural Miss First Nations Competition being held in Darwin in September 2017. Created by Queens The Ultimate Drag Crown, this event was the brainchild of Miss Ellaneous, aka Ben Graetz, and business partners Marzi Panne and Adriana Andrews. My understanding was that the impetus came from the “want” and the “need” for First Nations Drag queens to be seen and honoured in the same way mainstream drag culture is here in Australia and around the world. With the film Priscilla – The Queen of the Desert drag (Stephan Elliot, 1994) culture from down under had played a major role in the art from of drag becoming part of popular culture, this and then years later the onset of the television show Ru Paul’s Drag Race and Ru Paul’s career, people were starting to realise how drag queens reflected all of us, the way we want to see ourselves and the way we astre never brave enough to project outwardly for the rest of the world to receive.

Personally, I have also felt over my years on the gay scene that in Australia we still had a big problem with racism in the LGBTQI community and the fact that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders were seen as good for business (for bars, clubs and pubs) but behind our back we were ridiculed and ostrisised, often being made fun of by other non-indigenous drag artists. That is why for me Black Divaz was an opportunity I could not and would not pass up. Also, in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities there was and still can be a huge issue around homophobia, and transphobia. The suicide rate for Indigenous Australians are among the highest in the world, and in fact for some age groups it’s the highest. Now, how many of those statistics represent or are connected to homophobia / transphobia is difficult to say, but I feel like it is much higher than we even think. We needed to have the conversation in our communities, and in our families and a film like Black Divaz, hopefully can break down some of the barriers for that conversation and understanding to take place.

VF – Please tell us a bit more about the research with the Aboriginal communities, and how did you engage with them?

This was about a competition, and a group of drag artists / queens. I am also a gay Aboriginal man who has lived within and around the drag / trans community for many years. I felt like I knew and understood this film having researched it through my experiences, a lived experience. As with all our filmmaking, we sought permissions to film on the country in which we were filming, from speaking with the local Aboriginal land council, and the elders within those communities. But also, it’s important to state that the queens themselves spoke for their communities, and families by engaging in the competition and the film. Every single one of us, be it filmmakers or participants were making the film and competing for the same reasons, for the same goal. To bring more awareness and understanding and to celebrate and honour First Nations LGBTQI people, and the incredible struggle they endure in order to live their authentic selves, and their truth. And in this I refer to past, present and future generations of First Nation LGBTQI people.

VF – What was the most satisfying part of this cinematic journey for you as an artist?

ARW – The most satisfying part of the cinematic journey for me was the moment I took my seat at the Premiere Screening in Sydney, as part of the Sydney Queer Film Festival. Ask anyone who was in that room that night, there was something else happening in that cinema. It was like every single person in there had been destined to be there in that moment, to give the queens their love, their hearts and their endurance. The energy was unlike any other screening I have been a part of, and there were filmmakers in the room whose films have screened at the most prestigious festivals in the world and they too made particular mention of the audience and the screening.

Every single one of us was overwhelmed, so much so I still am processing the love in that room that night. We received two standing ovations, and for me as a gay Aboriginal man, I couldn’t have been prouder of the queens in our film. Their courage and rawness was a gift that had taken a lot from each of them to be in that place to give in and of that moment. And their gift will hopefully be a light in the dark for generations to come after we are long gone. But also, hopefully things change for the better and as they should.

VF – Did you encounter any resistance from the more conservative members of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait islanders community?

ARW – I didn’t encounter any resistance from anyone about our film, in fact quite the contrary. If there was any I didn’t hear it, and to be honest anything negative that people may have had to say was drowned out by the noise of thank you and appreciation for the queens courage in telling and sharing themselves in the film. if anything there was a sense of “about time”.

VF – What was the most challenging part of the experience?

ARW – The most challenging part of the experience, and in any filmmaking experience is what you learn about yourself. Particularly I find as a director. Being in the director’s seat, in my experience, illuminates all your strengths and weaknesses at once. What you are most best at is just as visible as your weakest parts. For some reason it takes the best of you and the worst of you to do this job. It’s something that I hope to get better at, or at least manage better but it’s also something that (I believe) is part of being an artist and pursuing something so unique in vision and in form. The artists that I admire in the world, and who have passed I feel this is obvious in their process as well.

VF – Aboriginal people still suffer from discrimination. Is crossdressing a tool for liberation and social integration?

ARW – I don’t really subscribe to the crossdressing part of this question, because for me that is too limiting and potentially diminishes what is happening within the art of drag. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders continue to suffer discrimination at an unacceptable level, and if anything it seems only to be getting worse. Whilst roads have been built between black and white in this country, the patronising manner in which First Nations people’s lives are managed and politicised is very concerning, and I don’t know if I can see a resolution coming in the near future.

These girls in our film highlight what courage looks like, and how it’s vital you don’t wait for an invitation to your life, you get out there and live it at full volume. You can see the vulnerability and self evaluation that is going on with the characters in the film, but what comes through strongest is endurance, resilience, and courage. The best social integration aspect to this film is it’s existence, and is it’s message. Fuck being asked to sit at the table, sit the fuck down and start the conversation! For me this film is a story about my hero’s, and that liberates me, my friends, my family and hopefully my community. Great question.

VF – What are you working on next?

ARW – I am very excited to be working on the screenplay for my feature debut (drama), which has been a long time coming, as it should. Again, it’s a story about another hero of mine. I don’t know what it is, but being Indigenous and Queer is like having a super power, and with that power comes this vision, and I can’t wait to share that vision with the world.

…

Eoghan Lyng contributed to this interview.

Burkinabé Rising 

Posted on by victorfraga

Politics and art mix in Burkinabè Rising, a deep dive into the way culture informs, comments upon and even provokes societal change. Looking at how Burkina Faso has changed since the popular uprising of 2014, it is a sprawling mosaic of a movie that seems to take in the whole country in its generous, inquisitive approach.

The key event is the 2014 ousting of Blaise Compaoré, considered by many to have led the country over the past 27 years in an undemocratic fashion. He took over from the pan-African revolutionary Thomas Sankara, who is widely considered to be Africa’s answer to Che Guevara (for one thing, he sells as many T-shirts in that region). More an African icon than a mere Burkinabé mortal, the spirit of Sankara is constantly evoked in this restless look at the country’s contemporary art and culture.

Using the ousting of Compaoré as a pivotal event, Burkinabè Rising shows how the surrounding art world helped to articulate the resistance, taking in everything from contemporary dance to reggae music to clandestine film festivals. From famous rap artists on the front lines of the protest, to woodworkers using traditional methods to create masks for tribes, no stone is left unturned in its all-encompassing approach.

By not really focusing on any one person or movement, Burkinabè Rising argues that everyone played a part in the country’s social change, showing that although leaders may point the way, it is up to all people to stand up and make a difference. With a remarkable 27 different ethnic groups existing within the country — many sharing similarities with surrounding countries such as Mali and Ghana — Burkina Faso is a model of how to bridge divides in search of a common purpose.

At first the movie seems like it is entirely content to depict a man’s world, but the women step in halfway through to give their version of events. There are feminist activists in the country who smartly see the revolution as a chance to gain larger equality, speaking about the need for contraception, women’s education, and entering the workforce, giving the film a contemporary urgency beyond its primary artistic concerns.

Most importantly, Korean-Brazilian director Iara Lee — who considers herself not just a director but an activist –doesn’t editorialise at all, allowing the people of Burkina Faso to speak for themselves. So many visions of African culture are seen through the lens of the (usually, white) director’s own personal experience — by avoiding narration, the Burkinabè people can actually tell their own stories, making the movie that much stronger for it. Perhaps more editing is needed to give the movie more narrative bite, but as an introduction on how to resist, and how to use art as a primary vehicle for change, Burkinabé Rising more than exceeds its aims.

At the end of the film we see that the struggle for true freedom continues, only now they must contend with transnational companies such as Bayer Monsanto — wanting to inject locally produced crops with GMO products, thus destroying local industries— instead of ruthless leaders like Compaoré. As this film and 2014’s Poverty, Inc (Michael Matheson Miller) show, African countries want to do it for themselves; now is the time for the West to step back and allow nations to work by themselves, something reflected in the film’s unobtrusive narrative approach, which perhaps stylistically limiting is the far more ethical approach to these types of subjects. Ultimately, it’s a true inspiration to countries that have languished under poor leadership for far too long, in the process laying out the blueprint for further resistance.

Burkinabé Rising shows at the Native Spirit Film Festival, taking place in London between October 10th and 21st. Click here for more information and also in order to book your ticket now!