HOME    PROGRAM    BACK MOVIE MONDAY'S 'FIRST' FIRST NATIONS FILMFESTIVAL

Saturday 30 November 2002 7 p.m. Qutuwas: People Gathering Together (58 min., BC, 1997, director Barb Cranmer. For thousands of years, the great ocean going canoe sustained the cultural and spiritual traditions of coastal First Nations. This century has seen the virtual disappearance of these sacred vessels. Reclaiming their ancient marine heritage, Native peoples of the Northwest Coast carved majestic canoes from centuries old cedars and set out, in 1993 on a remarkable journey, paddling hundreds of kilometers to an historic gathering of more than three thousand people at Bella Bella, British Columbia. Qutuwas documents the rebirth of the ocean going canoe and celebrates the healing power of tradition. This film won the first Telefilm Canada / TV Northern Canada Award, Best Documentary at the American Indian Film Festival, and was invited to the 1997 Sundance Film Festival.

Filmmaker Frank Brown as well as Ernest and Evelyn Willie Voyageur from Nanaimo were our special guests.

Voyage of Rediscovery (B.C. 1990, 23 min) Heiltsuk filmmaker Frank Brown shares the story of his personal encounter with traditional native justice. As a juvenile offender, Frank's family appealed to the courts to allow their intervention in the case. Instead of receiving punishment in a hard core juvenile detention center in Vancouver, Frank was banished to an island for eight months. Ten years after the fact, Frank offers public thanks to the Heiltsuk community and his family through traditional ceremonial form, the washing-off ceremony (quxua).

Pride (B.C. 1999, 6 min) Director Michelle Ryan is the heroine in this well-made, poignant short film as she relates how she, a Native Canadian but with pale skin and red hair, lives in a world where her "people" were constantly degraded and insulted by the white people around her. The documentary explores the potential racism that lives within us and exposes "socially acceptable" racism. The film was made at the Gulf Island Film and Television School by Michelle Ryan and Jessica Salo.