Sound
Kwanxwala-Thunder recovers the history of the Kwakwaka’wakw and stitches it together with contemporary stories of football and potlach in Canada. This creative documentary intertwines Canadian history, indigeneity, colonial legacies, feminisms, and sport. Shot over the period of several years (2009-2015), Kwanxwala-Thunder constructs a portrait of Alert Bay through soccer. The film's impressionistic approach takes us through the incorporation of soccer into Kwakwaka'wakw culture despite its colonial arrival on the island while highlighting multiple generations of female soccer players.
From the front lines of the fight to preserve BC's old growth forests, Rematriation is both an urgent wake-up call and an inspiring tribute to land defenders. Aggressive logging destroys more than 10,000 hectares of our province each year. Less than 3% of our virgin forests remains. At Fairy Creek, a coalition of First Nations and environmental activists refuse to stand down. Alex Liotti's passionate, respectful film gives these protesters a platform and amplifies their call to action.
This short documentary serves as a portrait of Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, one of Canada's most important painters. We meet him at the Bisley Rifle Range in Surrey, England, where he's literally shooting the Indian Act in a performance piece called "An Indian Shooting the Indian Act." It's in protest of the ongoing effects of the Act's legislation on Indigenous people. We then follow him back to Canada, for interviews with the artist and a closer look at his work.
A short, expressionist documentary, exploring the relationship between Cedar and three Indigenous women who work with it, weave with it, and live with it.
Cedar and Bamboo is a thought-provoking documentary about the unique relationships shared by early Chinese immigrants and Aboriginal peoples on Canada’s west coast. The documentary recounts the life experiences of four descendants of mixed heritage. Set in BC, their stories reveal the difficult circumstances of Aboriginal peoples and early Chinese immigrants.
Documentary short detailing the American soldier's part in preserving the fundamental ideals of this nation. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2012.
Thousands of Indigenous Canadians enlisted and fought alongside their countrymen and women during World War II even though they could not be conscripted. Ironically, while they fought for the freedom of others, they were denied equality in their own country and returned home to find their land seized.
Dana Claxton uses low-grade video equipment to create degraded images that correlate the treatment of the earth with the treatment of women’s bodies. A figure stands enmeshed in cutting barbed wire among ravaged forests and chopped tree stumps. Grainy black-and-white images have been electronically ripped, cut and torn in post-production while repeated images of the artist’s open-mouth scream silently against a volatile red sky. A video work from the early 1990s continues to resonate in our contemporary moment—and with decades of missing and murdered Indigenous women across exploited lands.
This documentary follows four female First Nations artists—Doreen Jensen, Rena Point Bolton, Jane Ash Poitras and Joane Cardinal-Schubert are First Nations artists who seek to find a continuum from traditional to contemporary forms of expression. These exceptional artists reveal their philosophies as artists, their techniques and creative styles, and the exaltation they feel when they create. A moving testimony to the role that Indigenous women artists have played in maintaining the voice of their culture.
For thousands of years, Indigenous peoples have governed their territories according to their own laws – safeguarding land, air, water and communities to sustain their cultures and economies. Drawing on the lessons learned over two decades of work with Indigenous peoples on Indigenous law-based approaches to land use planning, impact assessment and other aspects of environmental governance, in 2016 West Coast launched the RELAW program (Revitalizing Indigenous Law for Land, Air and Water).
Series of PSAs created by the Aboriginal Film and Video Arts Alliance exploring legacy and the history of self governance in Indigenous societies.
