First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

TIFF Cinematheque - Retrospective

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Spanning Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, this programme presents an unprecedented survey of the work of First Peoples filmmakers, from activist documentaries and narrative features to daring avant-garde experiments and fascinating historical discoveries. With an exciting roster of special guests, live musical performances and a new gallery exhibition, First Peoples Cinema is a celebration of Indigenous art, creation and unity of spirit across nations.

Films in First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition

    • Rocks at Whiskey Trench
    • Alanis Obomsawin

    • The fourth film in Alanis Obomsawin's landmark series on the Oka crisis uses a single, shameful incident as a lens through which to examine the region's long history of prejudice and injustice against the Mohawk population.

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    • Four Sheets to the Wind
    • Sterlin Harjo

    • A young Aboriginal man leaves the reservation and joins his troubled sister in the city in this Sundance hit.

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    • Mauri
    • Merata Mita

    • The first fiction feature by renowned documentary filmmaker Merata Mita is a raw drama about a Maori man on the run from the law who finds shelter and solace in a small Indigenous community.

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    • Once Were Warriors / Woodcarver

    • Lee Tamahori's ferocious drama was the first Indigenous feature to make a truly global impact.

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    • Tracey Moffatt: Night Cries

    • Poetic, gorgeously crafted and fiercely political, these three short films from the internationally acclaimed multimedia artist Tracey Moffatt are a vital contribution to the revolutionary aesthetics of First Peoples cinema.

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    • Radiance
    • Rachel Perkins

    • Three sisters reunite for their mother's funeral and confront surprising secrets and buried truths in the first fiction feature by Rachel Perkins, which established her as a leading figure in the emerging Indigenous New Wave.

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    • Bran Nue Dae
    • Rachel Perkins

    • Geoffrey Rush plays a stuffy priest at an Australian mission school who takes off after one of his runaway charges in this bright, cheerful musical which slyly undermines the legacy of colonialism through the power of song (and jazz hands).

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    • Beneath Clouds
    • Ivan Sen

    • A young, light-skinned Aboriginal woman running away from home encounters an Aboriginal man on the run from a prison farm in Ivan Sen's entrancingly intimate road movie.

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    • Eagle vs Shark / Tama Tu

    • New Zealand actor and director Taika Waititi has become one of the most promising young figures of the Indigenous New Wave.

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    • Ngati
    • Barry Barclay

    • A landmark in both New Zealand and First Peoples cinema, this affecting and beautifully shot film about a seaside Maori community in the late 1940s was the first fiction feature to be written and directed by a Maori filmmaker.

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    • Chick Strand's Anselmo Trilogy

    • Avant-garde icon Chick Strand's masterful documentary triptych, spanning twenty years in the life of Mexican Native tuba enthusiast Anselmo Aguascalientes, is a lyrical ode to the beauty, strength and endurance of ordinary people.

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    • Bedevil
    • Tracey Moffatt

    • Celebrated multimedia artist Tracey Moffatt became the first Australian Aboriginal woman to direct a feature film with this haunting, highly stylized trilogy of ghost stories.

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    • Ningla A-Na
    • Alessandro Cavadini

    • A vital, on-the-spot document of the "Aboriginal Embassy" established by activists on the lawn of the Australian Parliament in 1972.

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    • On the Ice / Sikumi

    • Murder haunts the blinding white vistas of the far North in these films from director Andrew Okpeaha MacLean.

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    • First Peoples Shorts II: Deep Roots

    • This shorts programme is headlined by an intimate documentary portrait of Tom Lewis, star of the groundbreaking Australian feature The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith.

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    • First Peoples Shorts III: New Worlds

    • These six short films offer entrancing, even otherworldly visions of the Indigenous experience.

      Due to print availability, the short film TimeTraveller which was scheduled to screen as part of First Peoples Cinema Shorts III: New Worlds has been cancelled, We apologize for any inconvenience.

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    • Busong
    • Auraeus Solito

    • The first feature ever made in the Palawan language is an intoxicating mixture of reality and myth, past and future.

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    • Toomelah
    • Ivan Sen

    • A ten-year-old boy living in a remote Aboriginal community becomes entangled in a gang war in this gritty portrait of reservation life from director Ivan Sen.

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    • The Orator
    • O le tulafale
    • Tusi Tamasese

    • A diminutive farmer must find the courage to speak out after tragedy strikes his family in the stunningly beautiful debut by Tusi Tamasese, the first feature ever made in the Samoan language.

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    • Mohawk Girls / Nana

    • Tracey Deer's compassionate documentary about three teenage girls living on Montreal's Kahnawake reservation is preceded by a short film from the director of the Cannes award-winner Samson and Delilah.

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In West Orange, New Jersey, in September 1894, Thomas Edison was engaged in his continuing experiments with motion-picture technology, along with his in-house inventor William Dickson. Among the subjects captured in this series of one-minute films were a group of Cheyenne and Sioux performers from Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, who performed two traditional dances for Edison's camera. Fittingly, then, representatives of First Peoples became some of the first moving images ever recorded. And the fact that these images were simultaneously documentary and show business — an authentic cultural expression, performed by Indigenous survivors of the murderous nineteenth-century conflicts between First Peoples and white settlers, dressed up for commercial exploitation and consumption by the very people who had exterminated so much of their race — means that from their very first appearance on screen, First Peoples were caught in the matrix of appropriation, falsification and ascribed "Otherness" that would define so much of their representation over the next century of cinema.

If generations of First Peoples artists working in the cinema have had to struggle against the seemingly inherent colonialism of the cinematic gaze, that same unwilled position between authenticity and fabrication has spurred a remarkably creative flexibility among First Peoples filmmakers, whose ranks have been growing steadily over the past three decades. Ever conscious of the complex implications involved in representing their people on screen, these filmmakers are acutely aware of the innate impurity, the constructedness of the cinematic image; thus the truths which they put forth are created truths, not simply neutral facts. Whether documentary, narrative or avant-garde, the work of these filmmakers consciously establishes itself as a counter-cinema, a critique, corrective or rebuke to a century's worth of falsities propagated by mainstream cinema.

That First Peoples cinema largely defies conventional film-critical or -scholarly categorization is part of its very nature. The prevailing modes of film theory and interpretation — genre theory, national cinema study, auteur theory — have historically excluded the work of First Peoples filmmakers precisely because that work largely does not conform to their organizational boundaries. First Peoples cinema has never been confined by genre; it has been produced internationally, without a central hub of activity; and its most noteworthy early figures (such as Alanis Obomsawin in Canada and Merata Mita in New Zealand) worked largely in documentary, a mode of filmmaking that has rarely been informed by auteurist readings. However, the past decade has seen a shift in the approach to and reception of First Peoples cinema that has not only begun to change the way the films are viewed, but sparked a valuable dialogue about how those prevailing cinematic organizing principles are conditioned by, and sometimes at the service of, the ideologies and power structures of colonialism's heirs.

First Peoples cinema thus strives not only to have more or better representation of Indigenous peoples on screen, but to challenge and change the conventional terms of film interpretation and understanding. To see these films is not only to discover a heretofore neglected wing of film history, but to reconsider what film itself is and can be. From the activist documentaries of Obomsawin (Incident at Restigouche, Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance) and Mita (Bastion Point Day 507) to the poetic visions of Tracey Moffatt (Bedevil, Night Cries) and Warwick Thornton (Samson and Delilah), from the epic fables of Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) to the affable genre riffs of Chris Eyre (Smoke Signals) and the dystopian science fiction of Jeff Barnaby (Red Right Hand), this rich, vital, and constantly evolving body of work constitutes a genuine Indigenous New Wave.

This series, the largest and most wide-ranging of its kind ever seen in North America, features key works from the four countries that form the canon of First Peoples cinema: Canada, the United States, Australia and New Zealand, as well as the first feature ever made in the Indigenous Palawan language of the Philippines (Aureaus Solito's Busong) and the first feature from Samoa (Tusi Tamasese's The Orator). Also included is a sidebar programme that offers a critical (though not necessarily condemnatory) viewpoint on some of the most famous films ever made about First Peoples by non-Native filmmakers, including Nicolas Roeg's Walkabout, Kent MacKenzie's rediscovered masterpiece The Exiles, and Kevin Costner's multiple Academy Award®–winning epic Dances With Wolves. Featuring numerous guest appearances, two special musical events with Tanya Tagaq and A Tribe Called Red, and a gallery exhibition of new media works by celebrated Native artists, First Peoples Cinema: 1500 Nations, One Tradition is a celebration of Indigenous art, creation and unity of spirit across nations.

—Jesse Wente


For Norma.

Special thanks to Lawrence Wharereau, Jasmin McSweeney and Kath Akuhata-Brown, New Zealand Film Commission; Sally Walker and Erica Glynn, Screen Australia; Charles Slaats, National Film and Sound Archive, Australia; Kristy Matheson, Australian Centre for the Moving Image; Sarah Davy, New Zealand Film Archive; Bird Runningwater, Sundance Film Festival; Lori Donnelly, George Eastman House; Sarie Horowitz, Robert Flaherty Foundation.