Award-winning indigenous films coming to Movie Mill in
A coming-of-age story of an Indigenous teen reckoning with family secrets and a poetic experimental documentary probing humanity’s place on Earth and other worlds are the feature selections for the latest SAAG Cinema event.
SAAG Cinema is pleased to partner with the Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival (WAFF) to bring award-winning features from filmmakers Trevor Mack (Portraits From a Fire) and Sky Hopinka (Malni - Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore) to the big screen at the Movie Mill on Saturday, June 25, 2022.
“The Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival’s mandate is to showcase the best Indigenous cinema from Canada and around the world and share our stories through film and video,” said WAFF director and co-founder Coleen Rajotte. “The films we are showcasing in Lethbridge are outstanding examples of the talent that is out there and we’re excited to welcome the community from southern Alberta to see it for themselves.”
Rajotte will be on hand to lead a discussion following each film on June 25. WAFF is the longest-running Indigenous film festival in western Canada, having marked its 20th anniversary in 2021.
Portraits From a Fire runs at 3 p.m. at the Movie Mill (1710 Mayor Magrath Dr S). There will be a reception for attendees at the gallery at 5:30 p.m. followed by a 7 p.m. screening of Malni - Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore at the theatre.
Tickets for each screening are $10 for the public and $5 for SAAG members (https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/saagcinema-winnipeg-aboriginal-film-festival457299?utm-campaign=social&utmcontent=attendeeshare&utmmedium=discovery&utmterm=odclsxcollection&utm-source=cp&aff=odclsxcollection). This event is made possible in part by the support of the Reconciliation Lethbridge Advisory Committee.
About the films:
PORTRAITS FROM A FIRE | 3 - 5 PM |1 hr 32 mins | 2021 | Comedy, Drama Possessing more determination than discernible talent, teenage Tyler (William Magnus Lulua) routinely premieres his lo-fi DIY films on his reservation for a smattering of viewers who struggle to stay awake. Undaunted, he maintains the belief that he and his films are bound for bigger things — at the very least, they can be a bigger draw than bingo. Just as his new friend Aaron (Asivak Koostachin) practically manifests from the ether to provide him with some welcome encouragement, a video tape resurfaces that casts new light on his family’s history and may just provide answers to questions that he’s long harboured.
Trevor Mack is an award-winning filmmaker from the Tsilhqot’in nation of interior British Columbia, Canada. For Portraits from a Fire, Mack returns to the reserve where he grew up, delivering an accomplished, open-hearted first feature made about and in collaboration with his community. Mingling authenticity and invention, Mack employs recurring formal flourishes to illustrate the porousness of the membrane separating past and present. As Tyler abandons escapism in favour of unearthing difficult truths, Mack testifies that where there is trauma, there is likewise the opportunity for healing. MALNI TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE | 7 - 9 PM | 1 hr 22 mins | 2020 | Documentary A poetic experimental documentary circling the origin of the death myth from the Chinookan people in the Pacific Northwest, Malni - Towards the Ocean, Towards the Shore follows two people as they wander through their surrounding landscape, the spirit world, and something much deeper inside. With luscious imagery and a seducing score, filmmaker Sky Hopinka takes us on a journey through language and belief. They follow Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier on their separate paths, contemplating their afterlife, rebirth, and death. A beautiful lesson arises about humanity’s place on this and other worlds, deceptively small and profoundly deep. małni is stunning on the big screen in both cinematography and concept. The film becomes more beautiful with the artistic use of language, spoken and written. The intimate film unfolds to something so large you’ll be thinking (and dreaming) about it long after. SKY HOPINKA (Ho-Chunk Nation/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California, Portland, Oregon, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His video, photo, and text work centers around personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape, designs of language as containers of culture expressed through personal, documentary, and non-fiction forms of media. He received his BA from Portland State University in Liberal Arts and his MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, and currently teaches at Bard College in Film and Electronic Arts.
Hopinka’s work has played at various festivals including ImagineNATIVE Media + Arts Festival, Images, Wavelengths, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Sundance, and Projections. His work was a part of the 2016 Wisconsin Triennial and the 2017 Whitney Biennial and the 2018 FRONT Triennial. He was a guest curator at the 2019 Whitney Biennial and was a part of Cosmopolis #2 at the Centre Pompidou. He was awarded jury prizes at the Onion City Film Festival, the More with Less Award at the 2016 Images Festival, the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 54th Ann Arbor Film Festival, the New Cinema Award at the Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival and the Mary L. Nohl Fund Fellowship for Individual Artists in the Emerging artist category for 2018. He was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in 2018- 2019, a Sundance Art of Nonfiction Fellow for 2019, a recipient of an Alpert Award for Film/ Video, and is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. About the organizations:
The Southern Alberta Art Gallery Ma an si ksika its it a pi its i ni ks sin foster s the work of contemporary artists who challenge boundaries. We encourage broad public engagement and promote awareness and exploration of artistic expression. Their work extends to local, national, and international communities. For more information, please visit saag.ca
The Winnipeg Aboriginal Film Festival is the 3rd largest festival in North America dedicated to showcasing the best new Indigenous film and video from across Canada, the US and around the world. Both on and off screen, WAFF’s mandate is to celebrate and cultivate Indigenous storytelling. The 21st Annual WAFF is being held November 24 to 30, 2022.