Totem: Return and Renewal
In this follow-up to his 2003 film, Totem: the Return of the G'psgolox Pole, filmmaker Gil Cardinal documents the events of the final journey of the G'psgolox Pole as it returns home to Kitamaat and the Haisla people, from where it went missing in 1929.
Servant or Slave
During the time of the Stolen Generations, thousands upon thousands of Aboriginal girls were taken from their families and pressed into domestic servitude by the Australian Government. They were supposedly employed as servants, but with total control over their movements, wages and living conditions, their lives all too frequently became an inescapable cycle of abuse, rape and enslavement, with consequences that echo powerfully to this day. Recounting the stories of five of these women – Rita, Violet and the three Wenberg sisters – Servant or Slave is a commanding piece of first-person testimony to a dark and unacknowledged corner of Australian history. Shot with admirable craft and humanity by documentarian Steven McGregor (Croker Island Exodus, MIFF 2012), Servant or Slave is a work of great sadness and urgency, bringing to forceful life the human tragedy of Australia's Indigenous history in the unadorned words of those who lived it.
My Colour, Your Kind
A portrait of an albino Aboriginal teenager, her feelings of alienation while at a convent boarding school, and her dreams of escape.
Deep Inside Clint Star
Director Clint Alberta takes us on a hilarious and bittersweet journey into the hearts and minds of some very ordinary, extraordinary young Canadians. Clint, taking on the role of Clint Star, seeks out his far-flung buddies, young Natives like himself. They talk about sex and life... love and abuse... 500 years of oppression--with humour, grace and courage. Deep Inside Clint Star explores issues of identity, sexuality and intimacy, while retaining the creative and playful style of a director who is not afraid of turning the camera on himself. This engaging documentary will draw you out of yourself and deep inside Clint Star.
The Last of the Nomads
Like an antipodean version of Romeo and Juliet, it emerges that Warri and Yatungka became the last nomads because they had married outside their tribal laws and eloped to the most inaccessible of regions. In 1977 the land was stricken by a severe drought and their tribal elders mounted a search for them with the help of a party of white men led by Dr Bill Peasley and one of their own number, a childhood friend named Mudjon. The film takes Dr Peasley back into the desert to relive his momentous journey with Mudjon and culminates with poignant archival footage of the elderly couple found naked and starving.
Takayna
takayna / Tarkine in northwestern Tasmania is home to one of the last undisturbed tracts of Gondwanan rainforest in the world, and one of the highest concentrations of Aboriginal archaeology in the hemisphere. Yet this place, which remains largely as it was when dinosaurs roamed the planet, is currently at the mercy of destructive extraction industries, including logging and mining. Weaving together the conflicting narratives of activists, locals and Aboriginal communities, and told through the experiences of a trail running doctor and a relentless environmentalist, this documentary, presented by Patagonia Films, unpacks the complexities of modern conservation and challenges us to consider the importance of our last truly wild places.
Foster Child
Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.
Spear
A young man reconciles ancient tradition with the modern, urban world in this debut feature from Stephen Page, artistic director of Australia’s renowned Bangarra Dance Theatre.
Eye of the Storm
A documentary about Nain, a Labrador Inuit community located near the world's largest nickel and copper deposits. As commercial mining interests prepare to exploit the resources, local residents consider the potential environmental and cultural impact. Meanwhile longstanding Aboriginal land claims are unsettled.
A Common Experience
A poetic exploration of the multi-generational affects of Canada's Indian Residential School system, based on the personal trials of Aboriginal playwright Yvette Nolan.
Ablaze
A feature documentary about opera singer Tiriki Onus who finds a 70-year-old silent film believed to be made by his grandfather, Aboriginal leader and filmmaker Bill Onus. As Tiriki travels across the continent and pieces together clues to the film’s origins, he discovers more about Bill, his fight for Aboriginal rights and the price he paid for speaking out.
The Coolbaroo Club
Documentary about "The Coolbaroo Club", which was the only Aboriginal-run dance club in a city which practiced unofficial apartheid. During its lifetime, the Club attracted Black musicians and celebrities from all over Australia and occasionally from overseas. Although best-remembered for the hugely popular Coolbaroo dances attended by hundreds of Aborigines and their white supporters, the "Coolbaroo League", founded by Club members, ran a newspaper and became an effective political organization, speaking out on issues of the day affecting Aboriginal people.
Xapiri
Xapiri is a Yanomami term that characterizes the shamans, male spirits (xapiri thëpë) and also auxiliary spirits (xapiri pë). Xapiri is an experimental film about Yanomami shamanism that was filmed during a meeting of 37 shamans at the Watoriki Reserve, Roraima, in March of 2011. The film was designed to take into account two different notions of image: those of the Yanomami and ours. Therefore, it does not set out to explain shamanism, its methods or procedures, but to allow different cultures to visualize and feel the way in which the shamans “embody” the spirits, their bodies and voices.
Four Faces of the Moon
Follow the animated journey of an Indigenous photographer as she travels through time. The oral and written history of her family reveals the story — we witness the impact and legacy of the railways, the slaughter of the buffalo and colonial land policies.
Our Warrior: The Story of Robbie Thorpe
A story of resistance across generations, the power of family and the unrelenting struggle for justice in a country that remains in denial.
Sacha Runa Yachay
The elders of the Kichwa community of Sarayaku preserve the history of their land for the youngest. They save the knowledge of their traditions against modernity and the invasion of their territory.
The Mermaids, or Aiden in Wonderland
At the end of the world, only Indigenous people can survive the toxic landscape so the white fellas steal ‘mud children’ to experiment on in the hopes of finding a cure. One such mud child, Aiden now returns to his ancestral lands, where the mermaids were meant to protect him. But the mermaids are being targeted too.
She Who Must Be Loved
A documentary that tells the epic life story of Alfreda Glynn, 78-year-old Aboriginal woman, stills photographer, co-founder of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), and Imparja TV, mother, grandmother, great grandmother, radical, pacifist, grumpy old woman, who in equal measure loves the limelight and total privacy. Part bio-pic, part social history, it details the life of a woman born beneath a tree north of Alice Springs in 1939, her childhood living under the Aboriginal Protection policies and the impact, both good and bad they had on her life.
Bakala
Anindilyakwa man, Steve 'Bakala' Wurramara is afflicted with a profound hereditary neurodegenerative disorder. While modern medicine looks for answers, the stories of an ancient curse and black magic still permeate this remote Aboriginal community in far northern Australia. Bakala enlists the help of his daughter to search for a cure from the traditional bush medicines in the land, desperate to find an answer before she too is diagnosed. As his desperation grows and his disorder takes an ever greater hold, Bakala realises he must fight this ancient curse to unlock the secrets of his Ancestors.
Dream of the Red Dust
A lament song for the fading Australian myths and reflection on it's status as a colonised country. The film consist of waste landscapes and confessions of an Aboriginal woman.