Simon Fraser University
Engaging the World

Screening: Banchi Hanuse and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

Wednesday, November 9 2016, 7pm
Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema
149 West Hastings St. 

This series of short film screenings will be followed by a dialogue with the filmmakers, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Banchi Hanuse.

Films by Banchi Hanuse:

Cry Rock

Immersive and revealing, Cry Rock is a documentary blends interviews set against the wild beauty of the Bella Coola Valley with vivid watercolour animation. The film illuminates the intersection of Nuxalk history, place and spirit that are at the heart of an oral storytelling tradition.

Uulx - The Scratcher

In a stark and stunning frozen remote landscape, an unlikely encounter between hunter and the hunted unfolds. But which is which? Inspired by a true story, Uulx - The Scratcher is a cautionary tale inviting us to consider our own disassociation from nature.

We Shall Eat, When the River is Full

19 years nearly extinct, the Nuxalk community sees hope in reviving the sputc (eulachon) — a fish vital to the Nuxalk way of life. We Shall Eat, When the River is Full is currently in post production and will be coming soon.

Films by Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

Bihttoš

Bihttoš is an unconventional documentary that explores the complex relationship between a father and daughter. Through animation, re-enactments, and archival photos, Tailfeathers delves into the dissolution of her parents' mythic love story and how it has coloured her perception of love in her adult life.

Colonial Gaze: Sámi Artists' Collective

Colonial Gaze: Sámi Artist's Collective is a mockumentary film that uses the familiar conventions of Dogme-style filmmaking to raise very real and relevant questions within Sámi art in humorous way.

Artist Biographies

Banchi Hanuse is the founder and station manager of Bella Coola’s community radio station, Nuxalk Radio 91.1 FM. Her directorial debut, Cry Rock, won several awards following its premiere at National Geographic's All Roads Film Festival including the Golden Sheaf Award for Best Documentary Short at Yorkton Film Festival. Hanuse began in the film industry as a camera trainee with IATSE Local 669 and then went on to work at the National Film Board of Canada - acific Yukon Centre - as a researcher and associate producer. She is an alumna of Werner Herzog's Roque Film School.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers is a filmmaker, writer, and actor. She is Blackfoot from the Kainai First Nation (Blood Reserve) as well as Sámi from northern Norway. She holds a Bachelor's Degree from the University of British Columbia in First Nations Studies with a Minor in Women's and Gender Studies. Her award-winning works are often rooted in social justice and explore innovative means of telling stories through mediums including narrative fiction, docudrama, documentary, mockumentary, and experimental film.

She is a recipient of the Vancouver Mayor's Arts Award and a Kodak Image Award for her work as an emerging filmmaker. Her recent short documentary, Bihttoš, was included in the TIFF Top Ten Shorts and was also nominated for a Canadian Screen Award and a Leo Award for Best Short Documentary.

Panelists

Dory Nason (Anishinaabe/Chicana) is a grateful guest on Musqueam territory where she lives and teaches First Nations and Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia. Her research and writing focuses on Indigenous women's feminist literature and creative activism.  She is currently at work on her forthcoming book, Red Feminist Criticism: Indigenous Women, Activism and Cultural Production (University of Arizona Press) and the co-editor with Margery Fee of Tekahionwake: E. Pauline Johnson's Writing on Native America (Broadview Press, 2016).

Marianne Nicolson (‘Tayagila’ogwa) is an artist of Scottish and Dzawada̱'enux̱w First Nations descent. The Dzwada̱'enux̱w People are a member tribe of the Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw Nations of the Pacific Northwest Coast. Her training encompasses both traditional Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw forms and culture and Western European based art practice. She has completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (1996), a Masters in Fine Arts (1999), a Masters in Linguistics and Anthropology (2005) and a PhD in Linguistics, Anthropology and Art History (2013) at the University of Victoria. She has exhibited her artwork locally, nationally and internationally as a painter, photographer and installation artist, has written and published numerous essays and articles, and has participated in multiple speaking engagements. Her practice engages with issues of Aboriginal histories and politics arising from a passionate involvement in cultural revitalization and sustainability.

Raymond Boisjoly was born in Langley, BC, in 1981, and lives and works in Vancouver. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa (2014); Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver (2013); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2013); Simon Fraser University Gallery, Vancouver (2013); Forest City Gallery, London, ON (2012); and Lawrimore Project, Seattle (2012). He has also contributed to numerous group exhibitions, including Beat Nation, Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal; Dalhousie Art Gallery and St. Mary's University Art Gallery, Halifax, NS; Mackenzie Art Gallery, Regina; Vancouver Art Gallery; The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto; Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC (2012-2014); Acquisitions and Archives, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2013); Pleinairism, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2013); Fiction/Non Fiction, Esker Foundation, Calgary (2013); Tools for Conviviality, The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto (2012); Devouring Time, Western Bridge, Seattle (2012); and Phantasmagoria, Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver (2012). Boisjoly is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

Tarah Hogue is a curator and writer of Dutch, French and Métis ancestry originally from the prairies. Based in Vancouver, BC, she holds an MA in Art History, Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia and a BA(H) in Art History from Queen’s University. Hogue is the Aboriginal Curatorial Resident at grunt gallery where she recently coordinated ARCTICNOISE by Geronimo Inutiq in conjunction with the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Arts and is editor of the exhibition catalogue. She is also lead curator on the #callresponse project with Maria Hupfield and Tania Willard along with invited artists Christi Belcourt, Ursula Johnson, and Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory, which is supported by the Canada Council's {Re}conciliation initiative with the JW McConnell Family Foundation and The Circle. Hogue has curated exhibitions at the Satellite Gallery (2011), Or Gallery (2012) and was co-curator on two exhibitions about the Indian Residential School system: Witnesses: Art and Canada's Indian Residential Schools at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and NET-ETH: Going Out of the Darkness, organized by Malaspina Printmakers (both 2013). In 2009 she co-founded the Gam Gallery, an exhibition space, studio and boutique in the Downtown Eastside. She has recently been awarded the Audain Aboriginal Fellowship with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and has forthcoming projects with the Belkin Art Gallery and SFU Gallery in 2016. She has written recent texts for e-fagia, Capilano University/Presentation House Gallery, Artspeak, Decoy Magazine and the 2015 MFA Graduate Exhibition at UBC.

Moderator

Sarah Hunt joined FNIS and the Department of Geography at UBC in July 2015 as Assistant Professor of Critical Indigenous Geographies. She is Kwagiulth (Kwakwaka'wakw) from Tsaxis, and has spent most of her life as a guest in Lkwungen territories. Sarah's scholarship in Indigenous and legal geographies critically takes up questions of justice, gender, self-determination, and the spatiality of Indigenous law. Her writing and research emerge within the networks of community relations that have fostered her analysis as a community-based researcher, with a particular focus on issues facing women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. 

Dr. Hunt received her B.A. and M.A. from the University of Victoria and her Ph.D. from Simon Fraser University.  She was awarded a Governor General's Gold Medal for her doctoral dissertation, which investigated the relationship between law and violence in ongoing neocolonial relations in BC, asking how violence gains visibility through Indigenous and Canadian socio-legal discourse and action. She continues to build on this work, exploring geographies of resistance and resurgence in the intimate, everyday relations of Indigenous people and communities. Sarah's writing has been published in numerous books and scholarly journals, as well as in popular media outlets such as mediaINDIGENA.com, decolonization.org and Op Eds for the Globe and Mail and CBC Aboriginal. Her most recent publications on Indigenous and decolonial thought include "Everyday Decolonization: living a decolonizing queer politics"(2015, co-authored with Dr. Cindy Holmes, in Journal of Lesbian Studies) and "Ontologies of Indigeneity: the politics of embodying a concept" (2014 in Cultural Geographies). Dr. Hunt is co-editor of ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies.

Images
 

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