For decades, Aboriginal people were frequently represented in Hollywood films, but these depictions were almost always deeply negative and wildly inaccurate. Worse still, as the feature documentary Reel Injun carefully observes, this screen presence had a very real impact on Aboriginal people and on non-Aboriginal people's ideas of who they were.
Director Neil Diamond takes us on a highly entertaining road journey in which he interviews a broad range of Native actors, directors, writers, journalists and stand-up comics as they discuss how these negative representations affected their own self-image and how key positive images inspired them. Adam Beach and Clint Eastwood talk about Beach's critically acclaimed performance as an alcoholic war veteran in Flags of Our Fathers. Wes Studi, one of the busiest Aboriginal actors in America, discusses the landmark casting of Chief Dan George in Little Big Man. Reel Injun also features a revealing interview with Sacheen Littlefeather, the Native actress who attended the Academy Award® ceremony in 1973 on behalf of Marlon Brando, who declined his Godfather win to protest discrimination against Aboriginal people by the film industry and the American government. Littlefeather recounts a disturbing anecdote telling how several people had to hold John Wayne back from dragging her offstage, so infuriated was he by her speech and Brando's statement. And one of the Festival's own programmers, Jesse Wente, offers his perspective on Aboriginal screen history.
But Reel Injun is much more than a litany of directors' mistakes and Hollywood insensitivity. Diamond features footage of films authored by Aboriginal people around the world, including Once Were Warriors, Whale Rider and Atanarjuat. As The Celluloid Closet did for gays and Hollywood Chinese did for Asians, Reel Injun illustrates how complex a minority group's relationship to the big screen can be. What emerges is an intricate, emotional trip that ends optimistically, with Aboriginal people finally able to tell their own stories in their own languages. For all of the sorrow, Diamond sees good reason for hope, depicting a varied group of filmmakers who have ultimately found their distinct voice onscreen.
Matthew Hays
Neil Diamond is a filmmaker from the Cree community of Waskaganish on James Bay. His documentaries include
One More River: The Deal That Split the Cree (04) and
Heavy Metal: A Mining Disaster in Northern Quebec (04), which won the Rigoberta Menchú Tum Award at the First Peoples' Festival in 2005. He has also directed
Dab Iyiyuu, a series about Aboriginal elders.
Reel Injun (09) is his latest documentary.