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IndigiDocs: Path Without End

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 14:46:11 +0100

Just wrapped principal photography on “Path Without End,” a 10-minute poetic dance documentary about the Friday family, their resilience through residential school, and dance artist Christine Friday’s journey to reclaim her family’s power through dance.

Film stills from filming at Friday’s Point on Lake Temagami
DP Sean Stiller (Secwepemc)

The 10-minute film, Path Without End, incorporates dance, archival images, and creative b-roll, with the addition of interviews and information about the Friday family and their experiences at Shingwauk Residential School. The overall tone is one of empowerment. The Friday family walked into the fire of residential school and rose out of its ashes. Their resilience is the focus of the film, not the violence inflicted upon them.

This project also documents Christine’s creation process as an artist. We are capturing behind the scenes footage of a dance artist’s journey in intimate detail as she researches, connects, develops, evokes, creates, and rehearses for this new work. She is exploring concepts such as her body as archive and land as memory. She will be taking movements inspired by her dance on her family’s traditional territory and in ceremony around the old residential school into the choreographic process for a new work. She will be working with special effects and visual effects to create a spirit world or alternate dimension to suggest where the Path Without End emerges from and disappears to. She will be embodying her family’s story and archiving it through dance and film.

Links...
IndigiDocs bootcamp blogs
IndigiDocs at Hot Docs
Cara Mumford Films July Update
Christine Friday of Friday Creeations

"The Ceremony"

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 04:19:52 +0100

I know that I have updates to write and thank yous to post, and I promise I will do that in upcoming days (maybe more regular blog posts should be one of my New Year's resolutions). In the meantime, I wanted to share a short-short futuristic story that I wrote recently. I considered looking for a publishing home for it, but decided to simply share it on my blog instead. I hope you enjoy this new story for 2018...

The Ceremony
by Cara Mumford

Sage sat on the floor in front of the sacred sand scrolls for the first time. In all of the years that she had attended ceremonies, this was her first time seeing the scrolls. She was excited and nervous. She had finally given her tobacco to show her intention to be initiated into the lodge; she hoped she wouldn’t do something wrong, drawing attention to herself and disappointing the members of the lodge. Focus, became the overriding thought in her head; she reined in her wandering mind, focusing again on the scrolls.

The first elder stepped up, pointer in hand. Sage leaned forward to listen, and he began to speak in Anishinaabemowin, the language of the ceremony, the language that Sage barely knew. He spoke rapidly and at length in the language and Sage thought, this is the cosmic joke, isn’t it? I finally receive the teachings but I won’t understand a word. Inside, she laughed at the joke on her, while outwardly she watched the elder, followed the pointer, and reached around her mind desperately trying to fill in the gaps of her lack of language.

Finally, the first elder was finished and the head woman of the lodge stepped up to give her teaching… partly in English. Sage listened to the elder speak with relief, eager for the teachings but savoring the sound of her voice. Sage would love to hear her speak every day. Then the head woman’s teaching was finished and elder after elder stepped up to deliver their own understandings of the teachings and Sage found her eyes drawn to some of the other women’s ribbon skirts. She fingered the fabric of her own plain and patched skirt and thought she should try and find some way to adorn it. Focus, she thought, her attention returning to the teachings.

They sat in the middle of a round building with glass windows in the curved walls, lush grass and dense trees visible outside, with the ground sloping down to a rushing river on one side. A massive skylight was in the centre of the ceiling, ablaze with the colours of the setting sun. Sage sat on the wooden floor, smooth with age. Some of the other initiates were on the floor with her; others sat in chairs. Sage’s eyes followed the point at the end of the talking stick that the elders used to indicate specific section of the scrolls as they spoke. Sometimes they spoke in English, sometimes in Anishinaabemowin. Now that Sage was an initiate, she felt a push to learn more of the language. How much of the teaching was she missing out on because it didn’t translate fully into English, because the connections revealed by the language were severed by English.

Then they were told about the gifts that they would need to make for other member of the lodge as part of their initiation. Sage tried to imagine what materials she might use, what items she could make. She had no beads, or enough fabric left to make anything she considered traditional. It is about the intention, one of the elders said, and Sage thought of her wild art, as she called it. Her sculptures created from found objects and gifts from nature—grungy, dark, and symbolic. Would they do?

After the sand scroll teachings concluded, the initiates were taught two songs. They would have to remember the melody and the Anishinaabe words to sing the song for the entire lodge during the next round of ceremonies. The drum kept the rhythm, a helper carefully pouring water onto the hide to keep it from drying. Sage felt her lips, remembering the feel of the water she had sipped earlier, losing her place in the song. She had to listen to the others for a moment before she could find her way back in. As she grew more confident in the words she was saying, her voice became strong and loud, as if her throat had never been dry from lack of water.

After they had been gifted with their new songs, the members danced out of the lodge. It felt good to be standing after sitting for so long. All day long. The drum once again set the rhythm for the dancers, matching the rhythm of their hearts, matching the rhythm of every living thing. Sage felt connected to all of the other dancers through that drum, connected to all of creation. She danced towards the east entrance of the lodge, wanting to dance slower, make her steps smaller and smaller so she would never reach the doorway, but she kept pace with the others and danced out of the lodge with them. Ceremonies were over for this summer and would begin again in the fall.

The hologram shut off automatically and the building went dark. Then the tint on the glass transitioned from blackout to clear and bright daylight streamed in. The hologram’s inner clock seemed to drift further and further from the days defined by the sun, and night was now turned to day. The landscape outside was barren, dust blowing over every surface, the riverbed long dry. Sage’s ears seemed to ring from the silence of the empty room, her eyes squinting in the harshness of the light. She always felt strangely hydrated after a ceremony, though, as if the holographic water was water itself. A sudden melancholy gripped her, as it always did after the ceremony hologram played. Four times a year for the past four years, with Sage looking forward to it more and more each year. She wondered how much her experience would change now that she had chosen to become an initiate. She wanted to know now but, of course, would have to wait three months to find out.

Why had she offered her tobacco to become an initiate? She had told herself that it was simply to vary the routine. She had watched the ceremony hologram for four years and she was ready for a change. But deep inside lived a hope that passing through the levels of the lodge might lead her to a portal, a place where she would finally be connected to other people again. There was nothing rational about it but she felt the truth of it deep within her bones. Something had led her to this building four years ago. She was convinced that her future was connected to its past.

Tired as she was, Sage had to check her water-capture devices and collect any water that had accumulated. The building had rainwater collectors built into it, but it rained so rarely and she would need a full canteen after she woke up from her nap. It was time to set out to search for other people again, survivors of this harsh, decaying world. She hadn’t seen another person, a real, flesh and blood person, in over five years, but she never stopped searching. Later today, on her search, she would gather insects for supper and also look for rusted remains from fallen civilizations to incorporate into her ceremonial gifts. She hoped, just maybe, that they might become offerings for a new and better life.

Sage opened the door that led to the entrance, what she thought of as “the hatch” because of it’s double steel doors with massive latches that effectively kept any dust out of the building. It was amazing, really, because the dust was everywhere else in this world. There, sitting on the floor, was a box. A box that had never been there before. She glanced around the hatch and noticed again the holes in the walls and ceiling that she had once thought were going to shoot lasers at her. Were they another holographic projector? They didn’t look like the projectors inside the main building. She touched the box but it didn’t have what she’d come to think of as the slippery feel of a hologram. It felt real. How did it get there? Even if there were people around, the door was still firmly latched. Could the hatch be some kind of replicator? Triggered by her offering her tobacco? She decided that was the most likely answer. This building was astounding, why should this surprise her?

She finally decided to open the box. Inside were packets of seeds. Seeds for grasses, for trees, for berries, for leeks and fiddleheads and asparagus, for sage, sweetgrass, cedar, and tobacco. Seeds to build a world. Sage fingered the packets in awe and then thought of the lack of water, of any tools to distribute or plant the seeds, and she sat down beside the box of seeds and felt like crying… but she couldn’t afford the water. Just then, the small room filled with whispers in Anishinaabemowin. She listened very carefully and realized with delight and surprise that she could understand the whispers, “In the spring the birds will come, and the rain will follow in summer, but this winter you will dance.”

3 Days Left!

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 21:56:26 +0100

Ecstasy crowdfunding campaign ends on Friday, November 10. You can get a copy of the film as one of the perks! Check out our IndieGoGo page: https://t.co/RaaWT0jojq

Interview

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 21:49:41 +0100

An In-Depth Interview

about ‘Ecstasy,’ a short narrative film, with Metis/ Anishinaabe Filmmaker, Writer and Director -
Cara Mumford

By Heryka Miranda

In brief, what is the short narrative film Ecstasy about?

Cara: To personalize the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women through the relationship of sisters. In the film, one sister is alive and the other sister is spirit. It is a journey to find healing from grief through spirit, dream and dance.

I understand that the ballet, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, influenced you in making the film. Can you share a bit about the ballet’s influence?

Cara: It was a play before it was a ballet. George Ryga, who was the son of Ukrainian immigrants – a non-Indigenous playwright, wrote The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. The play, as described by Ryga, is “an odyssey through hell of an Indian woman,” that hell being the racism and violence of an average Canadian city.

Can you share a bit more about the play, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe?

Cara: George Ryga grew up in northern Alberta and worked alongside Cree people. He had a strong sense of justice and tended to write about Indigenous issues, which made him very political in the 60’s. This is also what made him the perfect person for the Vancouver Playhouse to approach when they had the idea for the play. The idea for the play came when Malcolm Black, the artistic director of the Vancouver Playhouse, read a short paragraph in a Vancouver newspaper about an “Indian girl” found murdered on skid row. The article left Black wondering what her life what have been like. He then approached George Ryga to write the play, as a commission for the Canadian Centennial. I think it’s really interesting that The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is often considered one of the first Canadian plays and it’s about an Indigenous woman that seems appropriate to me. But Ryga was an ally without insider knowledge. The play, although well intentioned, reinforces stereotypes and the victim narrative for Indigenous people.

How did the play become a ballet?

Cara: In 1971, to commemorate the centenary of the signing of Treaties 1 and 2, the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood commissioned the Royal Winnipeg Ballet to turn The Ecstasy of Rita Joe from a play into a ballet.

Why was it important to you to include aspects of the play/ballet of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe in your film?

Cara: I started working with the play in my mom’s class. I began to read a lot about it and research what people have done with it. I read about Yvette Nolan who did an Indigenous version of the play at the National Arts Centre with music composed by Jennifer Kriesburg and Michelle St. John. I was very intrigued with the concept of Indigenizing the play that Yvette underwent. One of the (many) reasons why Yvette was brought on as the dramaturge was because of her understanding and experience with that urge to Indigenize. The character of Rita Joe is a metaphor depicting the hard life that many Indigenous women go through when they go to the city. That feeling of just having everything stacked up against her. I feel that because The Ecstasy of Rita Joe is out there in the mainstream, the play itself has been identified as a metaphor for the violent victimization of Indigenous women.

How does your film write a different ending to the ballet of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe?

Cara: There is an article called ‘The Many Faces of Rita Joe’ that really captured my attention as it discusses the different incarnations that the script took. There were five completely different drafts. One of them had Rita Joe speaking after she died. Before I saw the ballet, I was hoping they had incorporated that idea because ballet often has women dancing after they have died, such as Giselle. Unfortunately the ballet of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe does not. After seeing the ballet I was left with this feeling that it was not the right ending, because there has to be some hope after her death. I wanted to take the ending of The Ecstasy of Rita Joe narrative and take it somewhere else. That’s why [in the Ecstasy film] there is the living sister. She carries that hope forward. The living sister was Rita Joe but she made it out alive.

What does the word “ecstasy” mean to you?

Cara: In my mother’s class, we have had discussions about why the play is called The Ecstasy of Rita Joe. As with all art it’s open to interpretation. For me I look at ecstasy as a concept as complex as joy, although many people don’t see joy as complex. I remember having a conversation with Rulan Tangen about the word joy and how many people tend to equate it with happiness. There is a depth and a tragedy underneath that joy. You don’t reach a level of joy without having experience some deep pain. For me ecstasy is kind of the same thing. Ecstasy can be painful but you feel alive and that’s one thing that the Marsha character hasn’t been feeling, even though technically she’s the living sister. She hasn’t been living her life and she hasn’t felt connected and alive. For me ecstasy is that connection. There is pain as well as complex joy. It’s all of it together.

Can you tell me about the inspiration behind the character of Marsha?

Cara: The names that I have chosen to give the sisters have great significance. The character of Marsha is named after Marsha Ellen Meidow (with the permission of Marsha’s mom, Beverly Jean Meidow). Marsha was a good friend of mine who passed away in 2010, very suddenly at the age of 34. She was a frontline worker with girls on the street in Calgary. Most of the girls she interacted with were Indigenous. Although Marsha herself was not Indigenous, her husband was. She was the director of the Vagina Monologues in Calgary and raised money for Safe Haven House. She was a huge supporter of emerging artists. The feature concept of the two sisters going on a road trip came to me while I was driving across Canada in 2010, specifically the northern shore of Lake Superior. I kept visualizing a dancer along the side of the road as I drove. In hindsight, I now think that this dancer was flashes of Marsha, giving me ideas.

Can you tell me the inspiration behind the character of Lori?

Cara: The character of Lori is inspired, in part, by a young woman named Loretta Saunders. She was Inuk from Labrador, living in Nova Scotia, a student at a university studying the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women. She herself was kidnapped and murdered by two people who were subletting her apartment because they couldn’t pay the rent. Since she didn’t look Indigenous, Loretta was initially assumed to be ‘white’ when she went missing. I remember reading an interview with her mom saying that her heart almost broke when they changed the description of her daughter from being white to Indigenous. Her mother was afraid that Loretta would be downgraded to just another missing Indigenous woman and the police would stop looking for her. The character of Lori represents the women who should have been safe, according to the government and mainstream media who claim that the majority of missing and murdered Indigenous women live “high risk” lifestyles. For Loretta, and the character Lori, their only “risk factor” is being Indigenous women.

Another inspiration for Lori is Bella Laboucan-McLean, also a university-educated woman. Bella’s sister, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, writes about her a lot, as Delilah Saunders writes about her sister Loretta, so that sister relationship is right there, too. Bella had just graduated from art school and was going to be a fashion designer, yet somehow she “fell” to her death from a condo balcony in Toronto and no one in the small condo knew what happened. Again, these were not “high risk” women except for the fact that they were Indigenous. I want people to understand that an Indigenous woman can be the epitome of success, yet still be at risk because she is Indigenous; there are still people out there who see Indigenous women as less than human.

Why did you choose to shoot the film north of Sault Sainte Marie on Lake Superior?

Cara: I’ve done that drive so many times from childhood to adulthood. It never loses its magic for me. This territory holds huge significance to Anishinaabe people. We filmed close to the Agawa pictographs, which holds great power and carries many stories and dreams of the Anishinaabe people. There are many sacred sites in that area and the lake is said to be home of Mishibizhiiw - a manitou in the form of a lynx serpent that has many interpretations. I see him as a creature of balance and protector of the lake. Some people view him as evil but I think when he is acting violently it is to protect the lake.

Cara discusses Lake Superior and its connection to human trafficking that she touches upon in her film.

Cara: Lake Superior is also it is a huge site of human trafficking in North America, specifically on the boats between Thunder Bay and Duluth, Minnesota. During my research, I came across the statistic that 90% of women being trafficked in Canada are Canadian, and 90% of those Canadian women are Indigenous (this second stat is more contested). I’m not sure what percentage of those women are transported on these boats, but it’s one of the main organized sites of human trafficking in Canada outside of Toronto and Vancouver, along with areas around man camps for extractive industries. I read some interviews of survivors that have been on the boats between Duluth and Thunder Bay. Sometimes they are there for years. Some of them have had children on those boats and had their children taken away to become further victimized by human trafficking.

I accompanied Cara and Elisa, the cinematographer, location scouting along Lake Superior last June 2016. I remember when we arrived at Katherine’s Cove and the excitement that came over us. Cara expresses that day here.

Cara: Lake Superior feels like this intersection of the natural beauty, sacred sites of significance to the Anishinaabe people, and then this horrific human trafficking. It just felt like the film needed to happen somewhere along the intricacies and complexities of this land and lake. I didn’t know if we would find a spot where we would all feel that power, but when we were location scouting and visited Katherine’s Cove, I felt the impulse to sing to the water and you, Heryka, started dancing at the waters’ edge, and Elisa was so moved by the place. It felt like the right place where you could sing, dance and feel deep emotions. Everything we needed to do.

What are you hoping to convey when people watch your film?

Cara: The main thing I’m trying to do is to connect people to the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women on a personal level. It’s important to have statistics and information campaigns out there to raise public consciousness, however, I feel like until people see it in a story with characters that they can relate to that it doesn’t really get inside of them. I’ve learned that dance and music, with the right kind of narrative, can have such an impact on people. I’m hoping that people who watch Ecstasy will finally feel a connection to those women that are missing and to family members left behind. Change needs education with passion behind it—that will, that urge to change. I feel that this urge to change comes from touching people’s emotions. I really feel inspired to create something that is both beautiful and meaningful and has the ability to create change.

What’s next?

Cara: Hopefully, this film will also be the proof of concept for the feature film I would like to create with the collective, a road trip film following Marsha and Lori from Vancouver to Halifax, telling more of their story through spirit, dream, and dance.

Meet the Bizaanbakweg Collective: On Screen

Wed, 08 Nov 2017 21:46:14 +0100

Introducing Heryka Miranda as "Marsha"

And Christine Friday as "Lori"

All biographies of collective members are available on the "Ecstasy" website: https://www.ecstasyfilm.ca/collective-page

"Ecstasy" crowdfunding

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 05:16:47 +0100

The Film

"Two sisters, both dancers...
One living, one spirit...
A healing journey through dance."

Ecstasy is the collaborative creation of the Bizaanbakweg Collective, a collective of women whose artistic activities are grounded in Indigenous cultural values and traditions, while working towards an enhanced future for Indigenous peoples.

Crowdfunding campaign: Ecstasy Post-Production on IndieGoGo

The collective members are (L-R) Rulan Tangen (Metis), Christine Friday (Temagami Anishinaabe), Elisa Iannacone (Mexican/Canadian), Cara Mumford (Metis/Chippewa Cree), Yvette Nolan (Algonquin), and Heryka Miranda (Guatemalan American Mestiza). See http://ecstasyfilm.ca for full biographies of the collective members (coming soon).

The mandate of the collective is to create site-specific short narrative dance films, working towards a feature-length narrative dance film about Indigenous women created by Indigenous women for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous audiences, with the intention of bringing awareness to critical issues faced by Indigenous women today, such as missing and murdered Indigenous women, impact from residential schools, and human trafficking, while fostering a dialogue to generate understanding and solutions.

Watch the trailer on the home page. Pitch video coming soon!

Where Does It All Go?

Our funding goal is $10,000, which will pay for editing, sound design (including additional dialogue recording), original music, colour correction, and final mix ready to send to film festivals.

If we exceed our goal, the next $1000 would go towards film festival submissions and related marketing materials, so that we can spread our message far and wide. The next $1000 would cover costs related to this crowdfunding campaign (IndieGoGo fees, cost of perks, etc). The next $2,000 would let us pay Elisa Iannacone, our Director of Photography, who graciously deferred her fee. The next $1000 lets us pay back our DP for her travel (since she was out of the country on assignment when we our dates for filming got firmed up and she flew back to Canada from Australia on her own dime).

If we raise more than $15,000, we intend to tour with the film to Indigenous communities in Canada, offering dance, theatre, and film workshops to the youth in addition to the film screening.

The Post Production Team

Cara Mumford (director/ producer): Cara Mumford (Métis / Chippewa Cree) is a filmmaker, writer, and collaborative artist from Alberta, living in Peterborough, Ontario since 2010. Since becoming a filmmaker in 2006, Cara’s short films have screened regularly at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto, and toured throughout Australia and internationally with the World of Women Film Festival. She has received industry training through Telefilm Canada's Featuring Aboriginal Stories Program (2010/11), Bell Media’s Diverse Screenwriters Program (2012), the imagineNATIVE Film Festival’s Story Lab with Maori writer/director Himiona Grace (2014) & imagineNATIVE Producer Mini-Lab with Heather Rae, former director of the Native Program at the Sundance Institute (2015), and the National Film Board’s Digital Studio (2016/17). Cara’s films tend to focus on the connections between her identity as an Indigenous woman and living in balance with the land, often incorporating elements such as dance, dreams, and futurisms to lift her storytelling out of the ordinary world. She believes in the power of visioning for the future, and that the connection we have with the land today determines the future we have tomorrow.

Faisal Lutchmedial (editor) Faisal Lutchmedial won the Bell Media Diverse Screenwriters Program in 2012 and was assigned to the writing room of the fourth season of “The Listener.” He was subsequently hired to work as the story editor to that season’s webseries. As a director, Faisal wrote, directed, and acted in the short drama “Useless Things” (2009, 16 min), which won the Writer’s Guild of Canada English Script Prize at the Festival Nouveau Cinema Montreal. He also wrote and directed the short drama “Mr. Crab” (2012, 9 min), which aired nationally on CBC’s Short Film Face Off. Faisal’s other life is in the world of documentary, where he directed the feature “My Cultural Divide” (2006, 75 min), and several other shorts for festivals and television. As an editor he has worked on projects like “Burgundy Jazz” (Radio-Canada), an interactive web-series which won multiple awards, and was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award. Faisal is based in Toronto, where he works as a writer and picture editor.

Rob Bertola (sound designer) Rob Bertola is an award winning Sound Designer. He has won several Genies, Geminis, Director's Guild Awards, a Golden Reel Award and an Emmy. Robert's diverse Sound Desinger credits include live theatre, dramatic film, IMAX, animation, toy sounds, and a Museum soundscape for the Canadian sculptor Tony Bloom. “I am fascinated with using conventional and unconventional sources, mixed with perspectives, to invoke, thought, feeling or vision.”

Edna Manitowabi (Anishinaabemowin vocals): Edna Manitowabi (Ojibway/Odawa) is a gifted traditional singer, storyteller and Indigenous performance artist originally from Wikwemikong, Manitoulin Island. She is a fifth degree Midewiwin, Head Woman of the Midewiwin Lodge at Roseau River, MB and the keeper of the Little Boy Water Drum. Always a strong supporter of Indigenous Arts, over the years she has served as the Traditional Cultural Director for Native Theatre School, The Centre for Indigenous Theatre, and the Aboriginal Dance Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has also performed in several theatrical productions, beginning in 1994 with her first role in Drew Hayden Taylor’s play “Someday,” in which she was able to incorporate her experience as a residential school survivor. Most recently, Edna appeared as the grandmother in the film "Indian Horse," which had it's world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. Edna will be recording "Aunty Mary" for the soundscape of "Ecstasy." She is also one of our cultural advisors for this project.

Eekwol (original music): Eekwol aka Lindsay Knight (Cree Métis) is an award-winning hip hop performing artist in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, originally from Muskoday First Nation, Saskatchewan. Eekwol uses her music and words to spread messages of resistance, revolution, and keeping the language, land, and culture alive for the next generations. Through her original sound she displays her activist roots by living and creating as a supporter of both Hip Hop and Indigenous culture and rights. She has successfully completed her Indigenous-Music focused Master’s Degree at the University of Saskatchewan, which she has, along with her many years of dedication to hip hop, used to create something unique and astounding to give back to the community. Along with music and academic work, Eekwol frequently works with young people across the country as a mentor and helper. She achieves this through performances, workshops, speaking events, conferences, and programs. Check out her video for "Too Sick" (sampled in Cara Mumford's previous short film "When It Rains"):

Redlab Toronto (colour correction & final mix) REDLAB combines a world-class full-service post-production facility with unmatched technical expertise and talent. Since 2007, they have worked with world-renowned filmmakers, industry-leading commercial agencies, and broadcasters. Their services include colour, offline editorial, online, animation & design, VFX, audio, production services, 360 Virtual Reality, augmented reality, camera packages, on-set solutions, dailies processing, and various lab services. From conception to final master delivery, they aim to provide innovative post-production solutions, both creatively and technically. They are collaborators, artists, craftsmen, thinkers, doers, makers and inventors. Whether the project is heading to a 3D cinema screen, broadcast television, or the Internet, their mandate is to help make your vision a reality.

Share The Message

If you can't afford to contribute to the film but would like to share the message within it, please share far and wide and begin conversations on the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women.

Special Thanks

To Dorothy Gingras and Rodney Elie Sr., Elders for the Batchewana First Nation Fasting Camp, and Elder Willard Pine of Garden River First Nation for their support of the project during filming, and for inviting us to conduct ceremony with them.

And to our current funders: The Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Chris Krieger (Deluxe Design Group), Bob Mumford, and Marrie Mumford.

Leaks (director's cut)

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 01:01:24 +0100

Leaks May 29 2014 from Cara Mumford on Vimeo.

"Leaks (director's cut)" featuring Leanne Simpson and Minowe Simpson

A previously unreleased version of "Leaks" set to an early Garageband recording of "leaks" with Leanne Simpsons and Tara Williamson, featuring context from Leanne Simpson's public speaking on Anshinaabe Nationhood.

Digital Shamanism* and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

Sat, 19 Nov 2016 20:47:57 +0100

Avva's tells his story while the spirit of Little Avva watches © IsumaTV

(*My use of the phrase “digital shamanism” comes from this quote by Gillian Robinson (2008: 8): “Kunuk and Norman Cohn together invent a new form of visual memory, using high-definition video as digital shamanism to envision this story with so much clarity as to allow them to travel through time.”)

As part of the introductions in my Raindance Postgraduate cohort, someone asked the inevitable question about our top rated films. Since we have been asked in the first module to reflect on a significant film that has influenced us as filmmakers, I chose my top 10 films through that particular lens. Looking at that list for this assignment, I asked myself if I should I reflect on “Spear,” the most recent addition—a dance film unlike any other I’ve seen that feels like performance art full of symbolism and ceremony—or “Melancholia”—stunning, cerebral, and visceral—even though I find myself arguing in my head with von Trier on many matters, from issues of sexuality to personal worldviews. Or maybe the first film that inspired my filmmaking, the experimental “Meshes of the Afternoon” by Maya Deren. Ultimately I decided to focus on “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.” This is a film, born from a shared worldview, that makes me feel, think, and create art in response. It has impacted me in the way that I want my films to have impact on others.

“The Journals of Knud Rasmussen” is based on real events in 1922 that were literally written down within the journals of Knud Rasmussen. It is a post-contact story, a story of the loss of cultures, the story of Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen’s encounter with an Inuit family group, the story of a shaman (Avva) giving up his spirit guides so that his people can eat, the story of a young woman (Apak) whose connection to the spirit world allows her to see what others can’t: that life will never be the same again. This is the film that transformed me.

Apak, Avva's daughter © IsumaTV

“The Journals of Knud Rasmussen” is the second film by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, a Canadian-Danish co-production released in 2006. His first film, “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,” based on a 2000 year old legend and filmed completely in Inuktituk (the Inuit language), took the world by surprise and won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2001. “The Journals” did not succeed within the industry in the way that “The Fast Runner” did, but it exposed a raw part of Indigenous history in Canada and succeeded as a movie of catharsis for me and many other Indigenous artists I know.

In the New York Times review of “The Journals,” the team behind the film, Kunuk and his partner Norman Cohn, were quoted as saying that their films “don’t provide answers, they visualize questions” (Alioff, 2006). According to Kunuk, “[The Journals] tries to answer two questions that haunted me my whole life: Who were we? And what happened to us?” (IsumaTV). Cohn expanded on those questions in an interview at the Toronto International Film Festival:

As soon as we finished “Fast Runner,” we started researching this question of why people would take a sophisticated, 4,000-year-old intellectual and spiritual system that worked and had [them] at the top of the food chain and suddenly replace it with a completely foreign system, and end up 40 or 50 years later at the bottom of the food chain. Why would these people do this? (Giese, 2006)

So those were their question for this film. How did they intend to visualize this? “It turns out that one of the most famous anthropological accounts of people in the process of doing this was recorded in Zach’s backyard” (ibid).

Cohn was referring, of course, to the journals of Knud Rasmussen. Specifically, two of the 26 volumes of the Report of the Fifth Thule Expedition 1921-1924 that focused “entirely on the Inuit of Igloolik, who are the great grandparents of Zach and our cast and crew” (ibid). Rasmussen collected stories of the north to “preserve” them, believing that the cultures he encountered were ending. Avva chose to gift Rasmussen with his story, knowing that such a gift meant loss to him and his family in his time, but he was gifting this essential story to his descendants in the future (Robinson, 2008).

In her book, “Native American Drama: A Critical Perspective,” Christy Stanlake talks about Platiality as a distinctive Indigenous discourse that interconnects with concepts of Storying, Tribalography and Survivance (a neologism conceived by Gerald Vizenor that combines survival and resistance). The term Platiality was originally coined by Una Chaudhuri, author of “Staging Place: The Geography of Modern Drama, to mean “a recognition of the signifying power and political potential of specific places” (5). In Indigenous narratives, platiality expands to include “concepts of character, belonging, spirituality, time, and language,” which “all emanate from interrelated concepts of place” (Stanlake, 2009: 40).

Travel by dogsled © IsumaTV

In Kunuk’s films, the vast Arctic landscape is not exoticized but shown as integral to the culture of the Inuit people, a vigorous expression of the importance of land in Indigenous narratives with specific connections to time and place. In “The Journals,” we see the cultural negotiations of the Inuit to survive in their environment. The day scenes take place on the land with it's wide, white vistas, while the night scenes use the natural light of the qulliq (the seal oil lamp) to provide the only source of light inside the igloos, giving a radically different, more intimate sense of place. While the specifics of place are important in telling the story of “The Journals,” however, it is the fluid concepts of time inherent to Indigenous cultures that is crucial in understanding the importance of the story.

According to Cohn, “The whole purpose of the film is to give [Avva] a voice that he himself tried to send into the future” (Alioff, 2006). Avva’s intention was to survive so that his people could continue to exist. Using the power of his shamanism, he sent his voice into the future by telling his story to Rasmussen. His voice was heard through his descendant Pakak Innuksuk, who plays his own ancestor in the film, "delivering an uncanny stream-of-consciousness monologue taken from the real Knud Rasmussen’s transcription of the historical Avva’s words" (ibid).

Kunuk also incorporates Stanlake’s concept of Storying by weaving together stories of Avva’s family, Inuit shamanism, and colonial Christianity with entries from Knud Rasmussen’s journal. The film places Inuit ways of storying the world at the centre of the film as a form of sovereignty. The discourse of Tribalography, which encourages people to thread their own stories and histories into the stories and histories of other people, is also apparent in “The Journals” by incorporating the actors’ relationships to the story through knowledge passed down from their grandparents. Each actor’s sense of their ancestors also affected filmmaking choices made by Kunuk and his co-director Norman Cohn, adding to the authenticity and the richness of the story, made possible by Kunuk’s collaborative process.

Cast reviewing the script on set © IsumaTV

The use of Inuktituk in “The Journals,” which is important outside of the film for cultural restoration, also adds to authenticity within the film. And the untranslated songs “work on the audience as pure sound and emotion” (Fischer, 2006), affecting us on a deeper level, allowing us to access the belief in spirit needed to follow the main characters of Avva and his daughter Apak on their different spiritual journeys. That incorporation of spirit is one of the elements that prevents the film from simply presenting the view of cultural anthropologist Rasmussen, whose journal was used as the foundation of this story. Kunuk succeeds in taking a written historical document of colonization and using it to lay claim to his peoples own historical narratives and imagery. As Kunuk states on the Isuma website: “We recover the past not to change it then but to change it now… to avoid making our own present a shameful past for future generations.” I see this as just one example of Survivance.

I, personally, am intrigued by the idea of being inspired by a European text but, while centering that in the title, the Indigenous histories are centered in the story. This is something I have been inspired to try myself. In my short film “Ecstasy” (a calling card for my dance feature), I use elements of “The Ecstasy of Rita Joe,” a stage play about an Indigenous woman written by George Ryga, the son of Ukrainian immigrants, as well as the ballet based on that play choreographed by Norbert Vesak, a settler Canadian of Eastern European descent, but I am bringing in Indigenous interpretations, dance, and lived experience to deepen, Indigenize, and decolonize the source material.

The structure of the "The Journals," described as “lumpy” in Variety’s review of the film (Felperin, 2006), does not follow the three-act structure that is often the convention in mainstream films. Instead, it follows the rhythm of life, alternating between storytelling around the fire at night, stories that contain not just histories but deep Inuit knowledge and worldviews, with scenes of travel, dancing, and singing in between, giving the audience time to absorb the previous story and understand the relevance of that older history to the history we are watching in the film. These scenes of life are shot in long takes with only diegetic sound, creating a feeling of immersing the viewer in Inuit life, encouraging a contemplative approach to the viewing.

The film continues in this manner, building consistently in intensity as the group approaches Igloolik and the weather worsens, culminating in the final two scenes that contain nearly a century of the gut-wrenching grief of colonization. First is the scene where Apak breaks Shamanic law by eating a piece of the animal that is forbidden, marking her conversion to Christianity as final. My reaction was described so well by Lukin-Linklater (2008: 114): “As I watched hungry Inuit kneel and submit, I felt my insides unraveling a deep grief, a memory I did not know I had.”

That upsetting scene is followed by the most poignant, and last, scene in the film when Avva banishes his spirit relatives so that he, too, can accept Christianity in order to feed his people. The spirits’ haunting cries of his name, “pronounced A-u-a, sounds like an echo. As though his spirit relatives call his name again and again, mourning the loss of their human counterpart, crying after their banishment, while generations of Inuit also begin to utter his name, grieving the loss of their last shaman. This echoing is significant, in that Avva’s name comes to hold power locked within memory that is mostly unknown” (ibid). I believe that the echoing of his name at the end of the film, represents the power of his name rediscovered and resonating within the resurgence of Inuit culture.

Avva watches spirits leave © IsumaTV

Interestingly, the only non-diegetic sound in the film, apart from some brief narration by Apak, comes at the very beginning and ending of the film. The film opens with a recording of an Inuit ayaya song, as Avva and his family prepare to pose for a photograph. Amidst all of the on-screen songs by the Inuit throughout the film is also Knud Rasmussen (when asked to sing one of his songs) singing “M'Appari tutt'amor,” an aria from Friedrich von Flotow's opera Martha. His singing transitions to a recording of the aria sung by Caruso being played on a phonograph in the following scene. It is this recording that then plays over the end credits, which also include photographs of the real Avva and Apak and family as the credits roll. The ayaya songs are over; colonization is complete.

In a scene just before Apak joins the Christian Inuit, Avva says to Apak, “You see something ahead of us” and asks her to speak of the future she has foreseen. She answers with, “Whatever more I could tell you wouldn’t help us.” I believe what she foresaw was both the inevitability of colonization at that time, and the retelling of her family’s story through digital shamanism in this one.

This is the film that began my journey to becoming not just as a filmmaker but an Indigenous filmmaker.

Bibliography

Alioff, M. (2006) Falling Forward Into an Icy World. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/movies/19alio.html (Accessed: 9 November 2016).

Chaudhuri, U. (1995) Staging place: The geography of modern drama. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.

Felperin, L. (2006) Review: “The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.” Available at: http://variety.com/2006/film/markets-festivals/the-journals-of-knud-rasmussen-1200513533/ (Accessed: 9 November 2016).

Fischer, M. (2006) TIFF review: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Available at: https://www.isuma.tv/sites/default/files/attachments/CinematicalJKR060909.pdf (Accessed: 9 November 2016).

Giese , R. (2013) Paradise lost. Available at: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tiff/features/tiffknud.html (Accessed: 9 November 2016).

IsumaTV. (2009) Learning materials: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Available at: https://www.isuma.tv/node/6164/ (Accessed: 9 November 2016).

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006) Directed by Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn [Film]. Montreal: Isuma Distribution International. Available at http://www.isuma.tv/thejournalsofknudrasmussen (Accessed: 13 November 2016).

Lukin-Linklater, T. (2008) “Avva’s Telling,” in Robinson, G. (ed.) The Journals of Knud Rasmussen: A Sense of Memory and High definition Inuit Storytelling. Montreal: Isuma Publications, pp. 109–114.

Robinson, G. (2008) “Introduction: Who Is Our Storyteller?,” in Robinson, G. (ed.) The Journals of Knud Rasmussen: A Sense of Memory and High definition Inuit Storytelling. Montreal: Isuma Publications, pp. 7–10.

Stanlake, C. (2010) Native American drama: A critical perspective. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Red Card chosen for NFB/ imagineNATIVE Interactive

Sat, 05 Nov 2016 20:09:59 +0100

Set 150 years in the future, Red Card will immerse viewers in a time when the Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg people have regained a large portion of their territory while much of world outside is in turmoil, leading many non-Indigenous people to apply for their “Red Card” and seek a life in the territory. This project will combine animation, film, concept art, and interactive elements to explore “Indigenous futurisms”―an optimistic envisioning of an insecure future through an Indigenous lens.

Chosen by an NFB and imagineNATIVE selection committee, Red Card will now be developed by Cara with the NFB’s acclaimed Digital Studio in Vancouver, though an intensive year-long program that will include a two-day DigiLab bringing together a team of key creative thinkers. She’ll also have a chance to observe and liaise with the NFB’s digital team on other ongoing projects.

“imagineNATIVE and the NFB enjoyed the diversity of applications received from across the country. It is clear that there is a passion to explore new storytelling mediums and expressions from the Indigenous arts community. We’re eager to continue to provide opportunities to explore, play and develop interactive-minded realizations with this dedicated stream of support,” said Daniel Northway-Frank, imagineNATIVE’s industry director.

“Cara Mumford’s Red Card imagines the Michi Saagiig Nation in a world that turns Canada’s history upside down. Our selection committee was impressed by the reflective and positive concepts of past and present and future, deeply rooted in Indigenous knowledge and forward-thinking in the realization for both physical and digital public interaction. We’re excited to work with Mumford and her collaborators on this project,” said Robert McLaughlin, executive producer of the NFB’s Digital Studio.

See full press release: http://www.imaginenative.org/red-card-nfb-imaginenative-interactive-program

Indigenous Women: Agency, Creativity & Strength (presentation)

Thu, 13 Nov 2014 18:31:12 +0100