imagineNATIVE 2020 film festival review roundup (Inconvenient Indian, Shadow of Dumont, Êmîcêtôsêt Many Bloodlines)

The imagineNATIVE Film Festival offered up work from 153 Indigenous artists in 23 languages from 13 countries and 97 Indigenous nations this past October, and as with many film festivals this year, imagineNATIVE organizers were able to screen titles through a handy online screening room, opening up the festival to viewers across Canada.

Below you’ll find reviews from three titles that screened at the festival: Michelle Latimer’s highly anticipated Inconvenient Indian, based on Thomas King’s bestseller, Trevor Cameron’s road trip documentary Shadow of Dumont, and Theola Ross’ documentary short Êmîcêtôsêt Many Bloodlines.

Visit the official imagineNATIVE site for more information on the festival. You can check out the festival’s entire 158-page program here.

Inconvenient Indian

Adapting Thomas King’s acclaimed 2012 book The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America into a feature documentary was no easy task, but Métis/Algonquin director Michelle Latimer has synthesized King’s history of Native people into a remarkable and timely film that manages to build on King’s work to encompass still-developing Native movements and struggles up to the present day.

King appears in the film both as a narrator and as a viewer, filmed in a theatre watching the various elements of the film play out. Instead of a straight-forward chronological history, Latimer has broken the film into a number of vinaigrettes that touch on issues from Native land struggles across North America to current Native artists incorporating their heritage and culture into their works.

The end result is an almost overwhelming picture of the injustices Native people have to face today, including the blatant disregard of their land claims in the face of developers and politicians eager to pursue their relentless development plans. There are many moments in Latimer’s film that are heartbreaking and infuriating, but the film ultimately remains hopeful and inspiring by focusing on the younger generations of Native youth that continue to mobilize and fight for their rights in the face of daunting prejudice and repression.

Shadow of Dumont

Writer-director Trevor Cameron embarks on a road trip across Canada and the U.S. to dive into the history of Gabriel Dumont, the leader of the 1885 Métis uprising against the Canadian government’s refusal to honour their rights, in this surprisingly funny and moving documentary. Cameron is a descendant of Dumont and sets out in a beaten-up van with Métis iconography emblazoned across the side to visit some of the pivotal locations and moments in Dumont’s wild life, from the plains of Saskatchewan to New York City.

Cameron’s tone is light and self-effacing throughout — he is decidedly not an academic, and his journey to investigate Dumont’s life quickly becomes a search for a deeper connection to his own Métis roots. Dumont was a close ally of Louis Riel, but hasn’t achieved the same sort of wide cultural awareness that Riel has, which grants Cameron’s film an added sense of purpose.

With a comic and occasionally slapstick tone and animated sequences recreating Dumont’s battles, Cameron brings a light-hearted touch to the material, without ever underplaying Dumont’s incredible legacy. It may not take a traditional approach, but Shadow of Dumont serves as a great introduction to Dumont’s life and times while providing a moving look at Cameron’s examination of his celebrated ancestor and his own cultural identity.

Êmîcêtôsêt Many Bloodlines

Cree filmmaker Theola Ross documents her path with her partner through the fertility process in the moving documentary short, Êmîcêtôsêt Many Bloodlines.

As a queer, bi-racial couple, they each openly discuss the prejudices they’ve experienced in their own communities and families, and how they plan to raise their child in a more welcoming environment. Ross is also determined her child be brought up with an awareness of her Cree heritage, which extends right through to the birthing process.

Ross is able to capture a feature’s worth of emotion and understanding in the film’s 11-minute runtime. This is a powerful look at one couple choosing to build their own family unit based on common principles and understanding while continuing to honour and preserve Ross’ Cree heritage for the next generation.