Marie Clements
Marie Clements (Métis/Dene) is an award-winning writer, director and producer of film, television, radio, new media and live performance. Her work as a filmmaker includes the award-winning 2015 docudrama and the 2013 short drama which screened at TIFF and Telefilm Canada’s Not Short on Talent program at the Cannes Market. Her short documentary
Love was an official selection at Hot Docs in 2012. The film production of Clements’ screenplay Unnatural and Accidental premiered at the MoMA Film Festival in New York and also screened at TIFF.
Her latest documentary
Forward has screened at more than 200 venues in North America and received the Best Director Award at the American Indian Film Festival in San Francisco, in addition to being nominated for the Writers Guild of Canada’s Documentary Screenwriting Award in 2018.
Clements also owns and operates MCM, an independent media production company specializing in the development, creation and production of innovative works of media that explore an Indigenous and intercultural reality.
This musical documentary by Marie Clements connects a pivotal moment in Canada’s civil rights history—the beginnings of Indian Nationalism in the 1930s—with the powerful momentum of First Nations activism today.
Clements paints an electrifying picture of how a tiny movement, the Native Brotherhood and Native Sisterhood, became a powerful voice for social, political and legal advocacy, eventually affecting profound change at the national level. stunningly shot musical sequences, performed by an ensemble of some of Canada’s finest vocalists and musicians, seamlessly connect past and present with soaring vocals, blues, rock and traditional beats.
is a rousing tribute to the fighters for First Nations rights, a soulresounding historical experience, and a visceral call to action.
Watch it: nfb.ca/film/road_forward