Miriam El Abbassi | Arts Editor
Featured Image: Cinema Politica’s Documentary Futurism project seeks to explore the futures of Indigenous peoples.
On October 1, Nat Taylor Cinema hosted a screening of Cinema Politica: Indigenous Documentary Futurism, a collection of films that take a different, and incredibly unique, approach to documentary filmmaking.
Cinema Politica is a Montreal-based non-profit organization comprised of community and campus locals, who hold screenings of independent political films and videos by Canadian and international artists. “We believe in the power of art to not only entertain but to engage, inform, inspire, and provoke social change. Cinema Politica is the largest volunteer-run, community and campus-based documentary-screening network in the world,” as stated on their website.
Cinema Politica’s Documentary Futurism project seeks to explore the futures of Indigenous peoples, taking inspiration from the Afrofuturistic philosophy, which encompasses the ways in which different cultural elements (music, literature, art) with various futuristic aspects can intersect with black history and black culture (the film, Black Panther, is an example of this).
The emerging genre of Indigenous futurism combines fictional and non-fictional elements, along with an air of fantasy, to create a new image of what Canada could look like for Indigenous people. The creation of this genre starts to pursue the question of how the past and present can form the future, and what can this speculative future say about people as they are right now?
One of the films that were screened is Camfranglais, co-directed by Mylène Augustin and Feven Ghebremariam, set in the summer of 2117.
“Freshly elected to the tribal council that governs her country, Sam joins the national delegation that is invited to Tiohtià: ke (Montreal). This trip is a pilgrimage for the young girl, as she traces the steps of her great-grandmother who lived in this northern land over a hundred years ago. She will also come to realize the connection that ties her people to this foreign land, a bond woven through a struggle that will lead Cameroonian people and First Nations of Canada to linguistic sovereignty,” states Cinema Politica.
Indigenous culture and perspectives have not always been a part of the global conversation about how Canada would exist in future realities, often being poorly interpreted or omitted entirely. It is with this project that Cinema Politica hopes to spotlight Indigenous voices, with 15 films, each showcasing a distinct future.
