Beauty & Abundance: Short Docs

Katsitsionni Fox • 17 minutes 21 seconds • 2024 • United States • English

Haudenosaunee people follow the season cycles of the earth.  Our mothers and grandmothers knew how to take what was harvested from the land to create what was needed for their families.  They gathered clay to create intricate pottery and pipes, they wove matts from bullrush and cattail, they tanned moose hides and adorned them with quillwork.  Much of this land based knowledge went to sleep as a result of colonial practices including boarding schools, forced religion and land theft.  Today we can marvel at the work of our ancestral grandmothers from behind the glass cases of museums. Sometimes generations separate us from the knowledge of how our grandmothers created these things, but there is a connection, a blood memory that we carry inside of us.   

Jessica Shenandoah is Wolf Clan from the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation and comes from a large family of knowledge keepers.  As a young girl it was normal for her to go with her mother and grandmother to pick medicines, berries and wild food plants.  She is now a mother of four, seeking to bring back the land based practices that have been lost. Jessica reaches both inside and outside Haudenosaunee territories to find those who have reconnected this knowledge, so she can bring it back to our community and the future generations.  She embodies Tentsítewahkwe, as she picks up knowledge of the old ways, these slow methods of creating and connecting in reciprocity with the earth. 

Jenny Fraser • 10 minutes • 2023 • Australia • English 

‘DURANGEN’ means ‘grow’ or ‘growing’ in a number of dialects of the traditional Bundjalung language, and this documentary features six matriarchs speaking about their insider perspectives on plant art.
Discussing our artworks in the film highlights the contribution of women’s work in growing culture, alongside some of the many native plant companions revered in daily living for us as Aboriginal people since time immemorial, but are now under threat from recent floods, fires, drought and pests. It is essential for us to have an archival record and be able to reshare this, especially as it involves the irreplaceable biological heritage of the plant queendom.

As senior artists and cultural practitioners of the matriarchy, we each represent different clan groups that make up some of the Bundjalung Nation and are featured in collaboration with cyberTribe: Euphemia Bostock (Munanjali), Faith Baisden (Kombumerri), Tania Marlowe (Nyanbul), Deidre Currie (Minjungbal), Jasmin Stanford (Githabul), and myself as Artist Curator Filmmaker, Jenny Fraser (Migunburri).

The artists interviewed for the DURANGEN documentary were also part of a world first Bundjalung plant art showcase in Japan, representing Australia at the 2023 JAALA Biennial held at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum. The self-funded group collection featured a range of weaving, textiles, ceramics, photography, film and text, all with a focus on a bio-regional approach to native plant uses.

Sophia Flather • 23 minutes • 2023 • Canada • Gwich'in

The director explores her journey to learn the Gwich’in language and her wish to bring this to her son.

Comité de femmes Puakuteu • 7 minutes • 2024 • Canada • French w/ English Subtitles

Testimonials from the women’s group at Mashteuiatsh Puakuteu fill this intimate short film about grief and healing. In doll-making workshops, the women share their doubts and hopes and, in doing so, build a space of strength and solidarity.

Robyn Adams • 3 minutes • 2024 • Canada • English

Weaving shots of historical and contemporary Métis beadwork with intricate flashes of prairie landscape, and native plants this film explores relationship to the land through a place-based tactile knowledge. Featuring beadwork from Lor Brand and Jennine Krauchi this knowledge is shared throughout the film.

 Clementina Campos • 30 min • 2017 • Nahuatl w/ Spanish and English subtitles • Director in Attendance!

This documentary is a portrait of the indigenous women weavers of Sierra de Zongolica in Veracruz, Mexico, showing us their creativity and mastery of technique. Tracing all phases of the weaving process, from shearing the sheep, through washing, carding, spinning, dying, preparing the back strap loom, and finally, weaving, the film celebrates the women who have sustained their craft for generations, yet came close to losing. This documentary brings to light the fragility of traditional arts and the importance of bolstering traditional knowledge systems so the knowledge continues to be passed from one generation to the next.