Canadian Indigenous Cinema

• Main Author: Bertrand, Karine
• Other Authors: Marchessault, Janine, Straw, Will
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2019
• Subjects: Canada; First Nations; inuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190229108.013.7

Indigenous peoples of Canada have long been spectators of their own representation. Now, tools such as cinema and new media (blogs, YouTube channels, social networks, and more) allow a rewriting of history from an insider’s perspective and the decolonization of images that perpetuate stereotypes. Situated at the heart of this process, the remediation of oral tradition can be found across Indigenous cinema’s landscape, thus becoming a unifying factor linking works from different parts of the country. This chapter explores the indigenization of film by First Nations and Inuit filmmakers and by the participants of the Wapikoni Mobile project situated in Quebec. The analysis of a variety of short films from Wapikoni and other Indigenous filmmakers, such as Alanis Obomsawin and Zacharias Kunuk, allows an investigation of the ways in which oral tradition is deployed in Indigenous cinema, whether through the orality of the image itself or through narration techniques.