In Jesus’ Name: Shattering the Silence of St. Anne's Residential School

A poignant all-Indigenous English and Cree-English collaborative documentary that breaks long-held silences imposed upon indigenous children who were interned at the notoriously violent St. Anne’s Residential School in Fort Albany First Nation, Ontario. Use of a homemade electric chair at St. Anne's and the incorporation of testimony about student-on-student abuse makes this documentary stand apart from other films about Canadian residential school experiences. This film will serve as an Indigenous historical document wholly authored by Indigenous bodies and voices, those of the Survivors themselves.

Resident Orca

Resident Orca tells the unfolding story of a captive whale’s fight for survival and freedom. After decades of failed attempts to bring her home, an unlikely partnership between Indigenous matriarchs, a billionaire philanthropist, killer whale experts, and the aquarium’s new owner take on the impossible task of freeing Lolita, captured 53 years ago as a baby, only to spend the rest of her life performing in the smallest killer whale tank in North America. When Lolita falls ill under troubling circumstances, her advocates are faced with a painful question: is it too late to save her?

Eami

Eami means ‘forest’ in Ayoreo. It also means ‘world’. The story happens in the Paraguayan Chaco, the territory with the highest deforestation rate in the world. 25,000 hectares of forest are being deforested a month in this territory which would mean an average of 841 hectares a day or 35 hectares per hour. The forest barely lives and this only due to a reserve that the Totobiegosode people achieved in a legal manner. They call Chaidi this place which means ancestral land or the place where we always lived and it is part of the "Ayoreo Totobiegosode Natural and Cultural Heritage". Before this, they had to live through the traumatic situation of leaving the territory behind and surviving a war. It is the story of the Ayoreo Totobiegosode people, told from the point of view of Asoja, a bird-god with the ability to bring an omniscient- temporal gaze, who becomes the narrator of this story developed in a crossing between documentary and fiction.

The Medicine of Forgiveness

Benito Arévalo is an onaya: a traditional healer in a Shipibo-Konibo community in Peruvian Amazonia. He explains something of the onaya tradition, and how he came to drink the plant medicine ayahuasca under his father's tutelage. Arévalo leads an ayahuasca ceremony for Westerners, and shares with us something of his understanding of the plants and the onaya tradition.

Voices That Heal

Herlinda Augustin is a Shipibo healer who lives with her family in Peruvian Amazonia. Will she and other healers be able to maintain their ancient tradition despite Western encroachment?

Augusta

This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity. Augusta is a non-status Shuswap Indian living in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.

Black Man's Houses

In 1832 the government of Van Diemen’s Land sent the last Aboriginal resistance fighters into exile at Wybalenna on Flinders Island, bringing an end to the Black War and opening a new chapter in the struggle for justice and survival by Tasmanian Aboriginal people. Black Man’s Houses tells a dramatic story of the quest by Aboriginal people to reclaim the graves of their ancestors against a background of racism and denial. Documenting a moving memorial re-enactment of the funeral of the great chief Manalargenna, the film also charts the cultural strength and resilience of his descendants as they are forced to fight for recognition in a society that is not ready to remember the terrible events of the past.

Through These Eyes

A 1970s American elementary school program encouraging students to figure out for themselves the universal building blocks of human community — family, work, faith, etc. — inflamed political sensitivities so intensely it was shelved and forgotten. Archive footage of the documentary film series at the program's core, classroom exchanges, and the ensuing controversy frames larger issues of education, politics and ideology.

Place of the Boss: Utshimassits

In the '60s, the Mushuau Innu had to abandon their 6,000-year nomadic culture and settle in Davis Inlet. Their relocation resulted in cultural collapse and widespread despair.

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.

Alsina's Trench

Documentary film about the "zanja de Alsina", a long trench dug in the Argentinian Pampa in 1876 as way to separate the "civilized" from the "barbarians" during the massacre of indigenous peoples known as "campaña del desierto".

How the Fiddle Flows

How the Fiddle Flows follows Canada's great rivers west along the fur-trading route of the early Europeans. The newcomers introduced the fiddle to the Aboriginal people they intermarried with along the way. A generation later, their mixed-blood offspring would blend European folk tunes with First Nations rhythms to create a rich and distinct musical tradition. From the Gaspé Peninsula, north to Hudson Bay and to the Prairies, How the Fiddle Flows reveals how a distinctive Metis identity and culture were shaped over time. Featuring soaring performances by some of Canada's best known fiddlers and step dancers and narrated by award-winning actress Tantoo Cardinal.

Okimah

This documentary focuses on the goose hunt, a ritual of central importance to the Cree people of the James Bay coastal areas. Not only a source of food, the hunt is also used to transfer Cree culture, skills, and ethics to future generations. Filmmaker Paul M. Rickard invites us along with his own family on a fall goose hunt, so that we can share in the experience.

Habilito: Debt for Life

Documents the conflicts and tensions that arise between highland migrants and Mosetenes, members of an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. It focuses particularly on a system of debt peonage known locally as ‘habilito’. This system is used throughout the Bolivian lowlands, and much of the rest of the Amazon basin, to secure labor in remote areas.

Spirit of the Reindeer

The third and final part of a trilogy based on Arctic creation myths. The film is a multifaceted tissue weave of myths and traditions reflected in the symbiosis between reindeer, human and landscape.

Funeral Bororo