The Charlottetown Film Society will be holding a free retrospective of films from ground-breaking indigenous documentarian Alanis Obomsawin during July.
Obomsawin is one of the most celebrated indigenous filmmakers in the world. Her 1993 documentary “Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance,” is widely seen as the authoritative chronicle of the 1990 Oka crisis, in which the Canadian military was engaged in an armed stand-off with Mohawk residents living near a small Quebec town. The film, produced with the National Film Board of Canada, screened around the world and won over a dozen international awards. In all, Obomsawin is the creator of 50 films.
Starting Thursday, July 5, at 9 p.m., the Charlottetown Film Society, in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada and the City of Charlottetown, will be screening six of Obomsawin’s films at City Cinema. Obomsawin’s most recent film, “Our People Will be Healed”, will be shown at 9 p.m. on July 14. The film documents a school in Manitoba where Cree students are taught their own history and culture alongside the regular Manitoba school curriculum.
Charlottetown Film Society program lead Laurent Gariepy says the retrospective was an opportunity to mark the legacy of Obomsawin, after the release of her 50th film. Gariepy said Obomsawin has amplified indigenous stories in Canada and has helped bring the legacy of Canadian colonial history to a national consciousness.
"The voice that we give in Canadian cinema to indigenous people has become more important now since she started 50 years ago," Gariepy said.
Obomsawin, a member of the Abenaki Nation, has a lengthy list of awards, including an officer of the Order of Canada and a grand officer of the National Order of Québec. She was the subject of a two-week retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2008, and in 2016, she was awarded the 2016 Prix Albert-Tessier, Quebec’s highest award for cinema.
Following is the schedule for the Obomsawin retrospective:
Thursday, July 5, 9 p.m.: Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993, 119 minutes)
Friday, July 6, 9 p.m.: Rocks at Whiskey Trench (2000, 105 minutes)
Saturday, July 7, 9 p.m.: Waban-Aki: People from Where the Sun Rises (2006, 104 minutes)
Thursday, July 12, 9 p.m.: Trick or Treaty? (2014, 85 minutes)
Friday, July 13, 9 p.m.: We Can't Make the Same Mistake Twice (2016, 163 minutes)
Saturday, July 14th at 9PM: Our People Will Be Healed (2017, 97 min.)
