Florent Vollant – Innu

Léa devant la caméra

November 2023 •French

Revisiting her film set photos, director Léa Pool reflects on her prolific career. The filmmaker left Switzerland at the age of 25 to settle in Quebec and embark on a surprising career. She reinvents herself from film to film, exploring themes that deeply resonate with her: identity, exile, maternal absence, transitional spaces... In both documentary and fiction, she has directed 20 feature films that feature strong female characters and contemporary issues. Somewhere between a masterclass and an intimate conversation, this documentary invites Léa to share her cinematic journey in front of the camera.

Daughter of the Crater

September 2019 •French

A woman with a deep love of the land, Yolande Simard Perrault sees her life as having been shaped by a planetary upheaval in Charlevoix, Quebec, millions of years ago. As enduring as the Canadian Shield, she’s a woman of strength and spirit, a child of the crater left by the meteor’s impact. This documentary portrays a determined woman who’s the reflection of a land created on an immense scale. She was the creative and life partner of filmmaker Pierre Perrault, who gave up everything to be by her side. The film charts the influence of her unquenchable dreams and her contribution to the building of a people’s collective memory. In a stream of images and words, Simard Perrault recounts the splendours of the landscape and the people who shaped it. Generous and boundless, she embarks on a quest for identity that nurtures and perpetuates the oeuvre of the man who breathed new life into Quebec cinema.

Warrior: The Life of Leonard Peltier

November 1991 •English

An intimate exploration of the circumstances surrounding the incarceration of Native American activist Leonard Peltier, convicted of murder in 1977, with commentary from those involved, including Peltier himself.

Nanook of the North

June 1922 •English

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Documentário Brasil Tupinambá

August 2021 •Portuguese

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

February 2017 •English

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.

When the Mountains Tremble

September 1983 •Spanish

A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.

Baraka

September 1992 •English

A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.

Club Native

October 2008 •English

With moving stories from a range of characters from her Kahnawake Reserve, Mohawk filmmaker, Tracey Deer, reveals the divisive legacy of more than a hundred years of discriminatory and sexist government policy to expose the lingering "blood quantum" ideals, snobby attitudes and outright racism that threaten to destroy the fabric of her community.

Stolen Spirits of Haida Gwaii

July 2004 •English

Filmmaker Kevin McMahon accompanies the Haida delegation on a repatriation trip to Chicago in 2003. His film reveals the whole repatriation process through the stories and experiences of the people who participated, both Museum staff and the Haida people.

Mary Two-Axe Earley: I Am Indian Again

May 2021 •English

After marrying a settler, Mary Two-Axe Earley lost her legal status as a First Nations woman. Dedicating her life to activism, she campaigned to have First Nations women's rights restored and coordinated a movement that continues to this day. Kahnawake filmmaker Courtney Montour honours this inspiring leader while drawing attention to contemporary injustices that remain in this era of truth and reconciliation.

2012/Through the heart

March 2023 •French

What remains of the 2012 Quebec student protests? Little has changed in the decade that ensued. Rodrigue Jean and Arnaud Valade exhume images of the battles, recorded live and relayed through the mass media, that flared up as anger and indignation went head-to-head with the rhetoric of power. Against these divisive images, the filmmakers overlay a historical perspective of the state and its police in Montreal, Quebec and Canada, delving into the roots of sanctioned violence. Their compelling glance at the past is, of course, a cry that continues to echo in the present day. While the voices have been silenced, revolt still brews. All it takes is a spark...

The Annanacks

January 1964 •English

This short documentary depicts the formation in 1959 of the first successful co-operative in an Inuit community in Northern Québec. The film describes how, with other Inuit of the George River community, the Annanacks formed a joint venture that included a sawmill, a fish-freezing plant and a small boat-building industry.

First Daughter and the Black Snake

April 2017 •English

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.

Crazywise

June 2017 •English

Western culture treats mental disorders primarily through biomedical psychiatry, but filmmakers Phil Borges and Kevin Tomlinson reveal a growing movement of professionals and survivors who are forging alternative treatments that focus on recovery and turning mental “illness” into a positive transformative experience.

Plains: Testimony of an Ethnocide

June 1971 •English

A documentary on the massacre of Planas in the Colombian east plains in 1970. An Indigenous community formed a cooperative to defend their rights from settlers and colonists, but the government organized a military operation to protect the latter and foreign companies.

Inhabitants

March 2021 •English

For millennia, Native Americans successfully stewarded and shaped their landscapes, but centuries of colonization have disrupted their ability to maintain their traditional land management practices. From deserts, coastlines, forests, mountains, and prairies, Native communities across the US are restoring their ancient relationships with the land. As the climate crisis escalates these time-tested practices of North America's original inhabitants are becoming increasingly essential in a rapidly changing world.

No Word For Worry

November 2014 •English

As a sea nomad, Hook grew up with the ocean as his universe. Now he must make a courageous voyage to salvage the remains of his dying culture

Falas da Terra

April 2021 •Portuguese

'Falas da Terra' sheds light on the plurality and the struggle of the indigenous people for the right to exist, in a historical rescue of valuing their cultures.

Who We Are

June 2013 •English

Autism spectrum disorder (DSA) - It is not what they have, but what they are, who they are. They are Felix, Anthony, Marc and Brigitte. They are different.