Drawing Circles (Experimental Shorts)

Lightproof Film Collective • multiple films • 2022 • Canada 

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Ottawa’s Lightproof Film Collective and Asinabka Festival teamed up to provide local Indigenous artists an opportunity to gain experience and knowledge working with Super 8 film. 

Catrileo+Carrión (mapuche) • 6:30 • 2022 • Chile • Spanish w. Eng. subtitles

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An experimental Video Essay about creating safe space for epupillan (two-spirit) peoples,  honouring epupillan ancestors, and reclaiming epupillan histories.

Ann Holmgren (Sámi) • 5m • 2021 • Norway

A Sámi underground world where you can get inspiration and power. In this world Háldi is all living being’s guardian helper. The film focuses on the unity and power of female relations in Sami tradition and mythology.

Tyson Houseman (Nehiyaw) • 8m • 2021 • Canada

WÎSKACÂN is an experimental contemporary dance film utilizing Bunraku-style tabletop puppetry and object performance. Video, Puppet Design, Performance, and Music by Tyson Houseman. This project was made as part of Canada Council for the Arts Digital Originals initiative, and I acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.

Jason Baerg (Metis) • 7m • 2013 •. Canada

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Kisik Acimowina is an experimental collaborative multimedia piece created for exhibition purposes by New Media Artists Jason Baerg, Carrie Gates, and Music Composer, Michael Red. The work explores a time-collapsing journey in our land, from the perspective of a single traveller inside an ever-evolving land and sky scape.

Tank Standing Buffalo (Potawatomi) • 5m • 2020 • Canada 

Tank, a natural artist who is always drawing, runs into trouble with the law with his gang of friends. Tank is convicted, jailed, and subjected to solitary confinement and intense brutality. His art allows him to escape his terrible conditions. He discovers his own native spirituality while in jail, and through his art, finds a way to be in the world, and to reflect on his own reality.

Comunidad Catrileo+Carrión, • 4:16 • 2020,  Spanish w. Eng. Subtitles

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Federico Quidel Córdova was murdered on March 17, 2019, and was forgotten with unfair media invisibility compared to other murders of our Mapuche people. This case of hate and racism remained unresolved with no justice.  We produced this experimental video-essay as a gesture of empathy to remember him, as well as so many non-heterosexual Mapuche people who daily experience the violence of the heteropatriarchy that has dehumanized us. 

Craig Commanda (Algonquin) • 6m • 2022 • Canada

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Contrasting visual and auditorial elements fade in and out, images of animals and nature match images of 3D dimensional beadwork, while cityscapes and city-sonics barrage. 

Jaime Black (Anshinaabe) • 5m • 2021 • Canada

She Draws a Circle reflects on the work of generations of women to interrupt cycles of violence and oppression, looking to the ways in which our spiritual connections to the land and one another help us to hold space for regenerative healing, bringing the hidden to light drawing on that light to encircle each successive generation.

Ruby Mae Hinepunui Solly (Kai Tahu, Kāti Māmoe, Waitaha) • 7:31 • 2020 • New Zealand

Pōneke is a modern love letter to place, space and time. When I first moved to Pōneke (Wellington), I felt a deep connection with this place. I believe deeply that one can feel a history before it is known, that one can sense that they are walking backwards into the future, looking into the places of their ancestors.

Sandra Lamouche (Nehiyaw) • 9:30 • 2021 • Canada

Dance, film, spoken word and performance to explore the theme of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in Canada, in connection to land and resources and colonization.

Nathan Adler (Anishinaabe) • 4m • 2021 • Canada

A spoken word poem and minimalist audio track about a sexy highland stream, a love letter to the beauty found in nature, and the mysterious way beauty is suffused in the natural world, written in English and Anishinaabemowin.

Ariana Tikao (Kai Tahu), Alistair Fraser, Hirini Melbourne • 3m • 2021 • New Zealand

This video is for the title track ‘Nau Mai e Kā Hua', which is the name of the first duo album by Ariana Tikao (Kāi Tahu) and Al Fraser, two leading players of ngā taonga puoro. Water in te Ao Māori signifies life and identity. This song is karakia acknowledging atua presiding over various realms.

Siku Allooloo (Inuk/Haitian/Taíno) • 7:30 • 2022 • Canada

An Indigenous woman’s connection to the spirit world activates Taíno culture and presence, revealing a realm unseen. Super 8 film developed with plant medicines connect earth to cosmos as flowers portray family love and ancestral sovereignty extending into the future.

Samantha Loney (Metis) • 3.5m • 2022 • Canada 

An insecure gallery worker finds beauty in herself and the art she works with.

Jason Baerg (Metis) • 4m • 2017 •. Canada

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The three Cree syllabics on screen in this video translate to Awake, Pitiful , and Dragonfly.