Cinema is usually considered a means of artistic expression, but for many people it has been an instrument of othering and even oppression instead. Western film and gaze have insidiously and destructively impacted Indigenous communities around the world, and have been supporting the act of dividing people to “us” and “others”. This practice has mainly been maintaining harmful stereotypes and has thus supported, promoted, and in fact written the history of colonialism, marginalization, repression, land grabs, corporate greed, and genocide.

The very labels "Indigenous" and “anti-colonial” indicate a survival of these violent practices and the rupture with the land and its heritage, a fact that formulates the aesthetics, philosophy and politics of their filmmaking narratives. In our present era of reckoning, these artists are increasingly turning the camera around, telling their stories and fighting to seize opportunities in creating their own cinema. The first example of support is the establishment of Canada's Indigenous Screen Office, independent of other funding bodies of the settler state. 

In this talk, Maasai, Palestine, Raizal, Sámi and Cowichan, Haida filmmakers will share their varied range of journeys of resistance through cinema, reflecting on the strength, healing power, and beauty of Indigenous and liberatory filmmaking. We will hear about ethics and methods they use in decolonizing the storytelling and their views of the ownership of the image and archive, but also examine the obstacles they face and what can be done to remove or mitigate them. 

Speakers: Rosie Johnnie-Mills, Sarah Mpapuluu, Ana Maria Jessie Serna, Mohanad Yaqubi

Moderator: Suvi West