The films of Alanis Obomsawin

Alanis Obomsawin is one of the most prolific filmmakers in Canadian cinema and one of its greatest documentarians. For more than 50 years, she has been driven by a crucial mission: to make films about the lives and concerns of First Nations people by giving a voice to the members of the various Indigenous communities. Today, at the age of 90, a tireless force of nature, she continues her work, which remains as necessary as ever.

To her title of filmmaker, we can also add those of singer, storyteller, activist, and visual artist. Alanis Obomsawin's talents go beyond all frameworks and can be put to the benefit of all those who are committed to the prosperity and survival of First Nations. She herself was forced to live outside her community at the age of 10, but she kept the memories and traces of her people in the tales and legends that she recalled in exile in Trois-Rivières.

She arrived at the NFB in 1967 at the invitation of producers Joe Koenig and Bob Verrall who discovered her in television. She first worked as a consultant before directing her first work in 1971, Christmas at Moose Factory. Alanis Obomsawin tirelessly pursued the stories, destinies, pride, and sorrows of Indigenous communities across the country. In doing so, she writes, film by film, fragments of the contemporary history of Indigenous people, for whom attempts at acculturation and forced assimilation have caused immeasurable pain and damage on all fronts.

Alanis Obomsawin's work is absolutely unique in the history of world cinema. Militant and committed, she was instrumental in effecting positive legislative change. Deeply humanistic and empathetic, she has made it possible to humanize people who were prey to the worst prejudices during the darkest and most racist moments of Canadian history. Didactic and clear, she has participated in the writing of a history on the margins of official history, enriching historical realities and deconstructing founding myths based on destruction. Powerful and poetic, she has also offered several generations of Indigenous people the possibility of reappropriating their images, their nations, their imaginations, and their words. Such a body of work should be inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List.

In this retrospective, Tënk presents five works that allow a first incursion into the rich and dazzling cultures of different nations, without ever eluding the struggles they continue to face. There is as much rebellion as there is beauty, as much anger as love, on the long and perilous road to healing and reconciliation.