ImagineNATIVE film festival (iN2012)

A shout out for the ImagineNATIVE film festival that I attended this past week.  While not officially designated an eco-film festival, there is plenty in the films screened (as I argue more generally about indigenous film festivals) to pique the interest of any ecomedia scholar.

While feature length films such as Katja Gauriloff’s Canned Dreams, an aesthetically stunning and unnerving rumination on global food systems, and Dung, Tibetan Lance No’s experimentation with observation documentary, speak explicitly and powerfully to environmental themes, it was the shorts, many made by upcoming and emerging young indigenous artists, with their implicit eco-sensibilities that really captured me.  From Miranda de Pencier’s heart-wrenching Throat Song to Jules Koostachin’s NiiPii and Anne Merete Gaup’s Eahparas eerie resonances, and the more tongue-in-cheek tones of Kent Monkman’s Dance to Miss Chief and Tiffany Parker’s Scar, ecology is well and alive in the cinematic imaginations of these filmmakers, a number of whom I had the privilege of speaking with. A special thanks to all who were kind enough to take the time to be interviewed (including Jason Ryle, the Executive Director; and Alanis Obomsawin, a stalwart in the field.)

If the festival films come touring in your vicinity, I’d highly recommend attending.