Built in partnership with the McCord Museum and the Wapikoni Mobile, this Indigenous program of the 19th edition of FIFEQ-MTL focuses on the theme: Defending the Land in a Context of Climate Change.

The theme and the proposed films were chosen in collaboration with two invited Indigenous filmmakers, David Hernandez Palmar, filmmaker from the Wayuu community (Venezuela/Colombia) and co-founder of the organization “If Not Us Then Who?“, and Katherine Nequado, filmmaker and student in Atikamekw film production from the Manawan community (Quebec). 

This special program features, in a North-South dialogue, emerging cinematic narratives of plural struggles for the defense of territories and lands, interwoven with deep and ancestral relationships to them, jostled by external forces, both human and environmental.

Screening followed by a panel discussion on the theme : Indigenous struggles and resistance in the context of climate change

PANEL DISCUSSION FOLLOWING THE SCREENING

During this panel, issues experienced by Indigenous peoples in Quebec to defend their territories in the context of climate change will be discussed. In dialogue with the film presented, the challenges of Indigenous struggle and resistance, as well as environmental issues through the Americas, will be addressed.

Janis Ottawa is Atikamekw from Manawan. She has been teaching at the elementary level for 15 years. As a master’s student, she is conducting a research project on the Atikamekw Pimatisiwin pedagogy on Territory in a perspective of decolonization; an innovative pedagogy linked to the western pedagogy. 

Naomie Leonard is a PhD student at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS). Her thesis focuses on care spaces in the city and on the relationships Indigenous women have with urban public spaces. She is interested in spaces of tension, articulation and contestation between identities, territories and social injustices in the Americas. With a background in political science, she has a particular interest in the links between feminism and ecology.

Melissa Mollen-Dupuis is from Ekuanitshit on the North Shore. After a long professional career during which she shared the richness of her Innu culture with the public, she breathed new life into the Quebec branch of the Idle No More movement in 2012, with Widia Larivière. In 2014, she was named president of the board of directors of Wapikoni mobile and in 2017, she received the Ambassador of Conscience award from Amnesty International alongside five other personalities from the Indigenous Peoples movement of Canada and Alicia Keys. Since 2018, she has been responsible for the Forests campaign led by the David Suzuki Foundation.

MOVIE

MOTHERS OF THE LAND (Titre original : Sembradoras de Vida) by DIEGO SARMIENTO ET ÀLVARO SARMIENTO (75 min)

The ordinary, the everyday, the familiar, presented in an extraordinary way – exceptionally, grandly, and beautifully ordinary. From animated illustrations to sensory films, these cinematographic works invite viewers in through their great humanity. Touching, funny, experiential, they move us with the richness of their outlook on the daily pleasures and pains that are characteristic of the human experience.

MOVIES

NOSH UP (Titre original : COMEZAINAS) by MAFALDA SALGUEIRO (12 min) First Canadian screening

UNWELL MIND (Titre original : Yamei Shlishi Im Yael) by DANNA LEVY (38 min) First Canadian screening

DOMY + AILUCHA : KET STUFF !  (Titre original : DOMY + AILUCHA : CENAS KETS !) presented in collaboration with FIFA by ICO COSTA (30 min) First Canadian screening

There are times when the camera becomes more than a tool for capturing images, and comes to fully assume a function of accompaniment, even therapy. Whether it accompanies the director or the people filmed in their journey, the camera is not meant to be an imposition. It is benevolent, it listens, it supports; it creates time-spaces where we take care of ourselves, of others, of our relationships.  Watching these films collectively is a way of extending the initial gesture and invites us to practice care.

10 minutes of break between sessions

MOVIES

THE A-TEAM (Titre original : COMEZAINAS) by NNENNA ONUOHA (17 min) 

HABITER BEYROUTH by MICHEL TABET  (42 min) First Canadian screening

We invite you to celebrate the weekend together at URSA for a live solo performance by Flora starting at 9 p.m.

Description of the artist:

Flora, voice8 finalist, Mexican-Quebec singer-songwriter, evolves through pop soul, alternative R&B, indie-folk and Latin. Originally from the Outaouais, based in Montreal, her floral and theatrical touch has distinguished her since the beginning of her career. Following her television success, she landed a mini-album contract with Les Disques Now and presented “Reinacimiento – how to rise from the ashes” on May 13, 2022. The urban hippie is a proud representative of cultural mixing. Her trilingual songs depict a textured and colorful universe. She offers us sounds that bathe us in a tropical flood to the colorful words of her daily life filled with endearing stories. She defends, above all, feminist, libertine and human ideals.

There are times when the camera becomes more than a tool for capturing images, and comes to fully assume a function of accompaniment, even therapy. Whether it accompanies the director or the people filmed in their journey, the camera is not meant to be an imposition. It is benevolent, it listens, it supports; it creates time-spaces where we take care of ourselves, of others, of our relationships.  Watching these films collectively is a way of extending the initial gesture and invites us to practice care.

MOVIE

A NIGHT SONG (Titre original : LE CHANT DE LA NUIT) presented in collaboration with RIDM by FÉLIX LAMARCHE (45 min) 

Tic, toc – everyday life is long, slow. Workers inhabit an often boring space-time, whose slowness is here magnified by cinematographic art. The textures, lengths and poetics of proletarian daily life are praised, and we are allowed to observe and admire them. Meet us at the Cinéma Moderne for a contemplative session following the rhythms of daily work.

MOVIES

ONE CORNER OF A SPHERE by THÉO ZESIGER (28 min) First canadian screening

ASTRONAUTS OF FEUERBACH by JOHANN SCHILLING (29 min)First canadian screening

Between two screenings, we invite all festival participants to come meet and chat during a 5 @ 7 meeting on a chill musical atmosphere.

Come discover and celebrate the cinematographic work of Diana Allan, an anthropologist and filmmaker interested in the present and past experiences of Palestinian refugees exiled in Lebanon. The screening of these three landmark films made by the anthropologist-filmmaker, which are characterized by a striking cinematography and a wonderful sensorial poetry, will be followed by a workshop-discussion during which Diana Allan will present unpublished fragments of a film she is currently directing. The event, which will be convivial and open to all, will be punctuated by a reading of testimonies from the Nakba archives by multidisciplinary artist Hoda Adra and by lively discussions around delicious appetizers. The sensorialities of migratory nostalgia, the affects of uprootings that spread over long periods of time, the presents of the past, as well as the notion of living archives linked to the experiences of Palestinians refugees living in Lebanon will be discussed. See you at Concordia for an exceptional, inspiring, and free evening! An event not to be missed.

MOVIES

SO DEAR, SO LOVELY by DIANA ALLAN (23 min)

TERRACE OF THE SEA by DIANA ALLAN (52 min)

STILL LIFE by DIANA ALLAN (25 min)

On the sides of the velvet curtains, behind the action flap, on the edge of the fourth wall… what stagings and what theatricality for reality? Between a veiled revelation of the unspoken of cinematographic production and an ethnographic spectacle of the everyday, these moving films, belonging to different social universes, navigate the form of the “huis clos”, an enclosure with no exit.

Screening followed by a discussion (in English) with Mariangel Betancourt-Diaz, Resource Coordinator at Collectif Bienvenue (a Montreal-based organization dedicated to asylum seekers). Discussion moderated by Jill Hanley, specialist in migration issues, professor of social work at McGill University and scientific director of the University Institute – SHERPA.

MOVIE

MA VIE EN PAPIER presented in collaboration with Cinéma Sous les Étoiles by VIDA DENA (45 min) First canadian screening

These films are dotted with an exacerbated sensitivity that is staged through filmic experimentation, from animation to the sensoriality of imagined reality. These cinematographic works offer an intimate immersion in stories of yesterday and today, personal and shared. These filmic travels, these emotional journeys, do not leave one unscathed.

MOVIES

LULLABY by IRÈNE-KIMBERLEY VALIN-AWASHISH (4 min)

ON ZENITH’S EDGE (Original title : SUR LE FIL DU ZÉNITH) by NATYVEL PONTALIER (55 min) First canadian screening

AWASKINAWASON (ENFANTS DE LA TERRE) by ANTHONY DUBÉ (3 min)

Two screenings, two outstanding feature films. Disorienting in their approach to collective realities, these two works make laugh and think. In 1983, anthropologist Benedict Anderson proposed to think of the concept of the nation as that of an “imagined community”: we invite you, with these two films, to push the reflection and to question the real, the unreal, and the imaginaries of two contemporary national communities.

MOVIE

SEVEN RIDGES (Titre original : Siete Filos) by ANTONIO COELLO (75 min) First quebec screening

For this third evening of the festival we will set up a more friendly and fun atmosphere with the performance of 3 stand-up artists: Altesse, Mibenson & Antony Giuliani. They will be followed by a jazz atmosphere proposed by the duo Denis Roy and Guillaume Lefebvre.

Descriptions of the artists:

Altesse! Remember this name. Newly arrived on the Montreal scene, this young Congolese will dazzle you with her energy, her style and above all her unique elocution. If you thought Louis-José Houde spoke fast, you ain’t seen nothing yet! His humor is like a new wind that hits you hard and captures your attention instantly. Without restraint, she shares her moods while delivering a few messages through her jokes. Whether it’s her impressive flow or her flamboyant personality, Altesse will certainly keep you spellbound.

Mibbenson Sylvain: Mibenson is a humorist of Haitian origin who grew up in Terrebonne. He started humor 4 years ago in bars. Mibenson is a bon vivant, he has a dynamism and a contagious joie de vivre. He will make you fall on his charm, otherwise money back… or something like that.

Antony Giuliani: emerging comedian from Montreal.

Duo jazz: Saxophonist Denis Roy and bassist Guillaume Lefebvre have been improvising together since 2019.

Over the years, they have developed a dialogue and a rich musical complicity that will transport you through music colored with several varied styles.

Is film a transparent medium? What material and social granularities color and stain it? What textures do the layers of reality take on? These fascinating films, two quests for knowledge and experience, consider the materiality of filmic captation. Attempting to capture immateriality and to materialize film, these works are printed with reality and allow us to critically and poetically engage with the question of the image in cinematographic and ethnographic practices. Two outstanding films; two must-sees.

MOVIES

LIGHT UPON LIGHT by CHRISTIAN SUHR (78 min) First canadian screening

PRISME de AN VAN DIENDEREN, ROSINE MBAKAM AND ELÉONORE YAMEOGO (78 min) First canadian screening

There are times when the camera becomes more than a tool for capturing images, and comes to fully assume a function of accompaniment, even therapy. Whether it accompanies the director or the people filmed in their journey, the camera is not meant to be an imposition. It is benevolent, it listens, it supports; it creates time-spaces where we take care of ourselves, of others, of our relationships.  Watching these films collectively is a way of extending the initial gesture and invites us to practice care.

Discussion in the presence of Melissa Sokoloff, 

MOVIES

ODEHIMIN (Original title: Baie du coeur) by KIJÂTAI-ALEXANDRA VEILLETTE-CHEEZO (3 min) 

JULIE ON LINE (Original title: Fréquence Julie) presented in collaboration with the Festival Filministes by MIA MA (78 min) First canadian screening

Two screenings, two outstanding feature films. Disorienting in their approach to collective realities, these two works make laugh and think. In 1983, anthropologist Benedict Anderson proposed to think of the concept of the nation as that of an “imagined community”: we invite you, with these two films, to push the reflection and to question the real, the unreal, and the imaginaries of two contemporary national communities.

MOVIE

DON’T WORRY ABOUT INDIA by NAMA FILMCOLLECTIVE (98 min) First canadian screening

Limited places (10 people)

This film creation workshop aims to familiarize the public with the genre of ethnographic film and to propose a creative and collaborative practice. The participants will be led to collectively discuss a theme, as well as a artistic direction. They will then be offered to shoot images and record sounds that will be used to create the movie.

If you are interested in participating, send us an email at our address: ethnographik@gmail.com, specifying in the subject: “workshop-creation”

Hosted by: 

Anna HENRY

Anna Henry is a student in anthropology and environment at McGill University. She is particularly interested in the intersection between these two disciplines and the possibilities that visual anthropology can offer in these fields.

Héloïse GRUZ

Héloïse Gruz (France, 1998) has been in Montreal for less than a year. PhD student in research-creation at the University of Montreal in cinematographic studies, they previously obtained a master’s degree in philosophy at the Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris (2020) then a master’s degree in Arts, literature and language at the École of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences in Paris (2022). Self-taught and amateur in documentary film and noise music, 2/Us is their last medium-length film. They are currently based in Montreal.

Course of the workshop

1 p.m.-1:45 p.m.

• Field familiarization
• Presentation, context: what is an ethnographic film?
• Watching extracts from films shot with a telephone
• Presentation of the workshop process
• Define a first shooting theme

1:45 p.m.-2:15 p.m.

• Location scouting, 1st shooting session

2:15-2:45 p.m.

• Pooling of images/recordings
• Set movie theme

2:45 p.m.-3 p.m.

• Break

3-4 p.m.

• 2nd shooting session

4-5 p.m.

• Pooling of images/recordings
• Final discussion

Two weeks will be needed to finalize the final assembly. A first draft of the film will be shared with the participants at the end of the first week of editing and their feedback will be taken into account before finalizing the film. The final version of the film will also be shared with the participants and potentially published on the website of the FIFEQ-MTL.

Limited places (10 people)
The workshop will be conducted in English.

The workshop we propose will take sound as its medium and method of investigation. Our challenge in this workshop will be to build a creative sound composition using our smartphone microphones, found objects and basic audio editing technology within the three-hour timeframe. 

We will suggest a composition that evokes a particular emotion, feeling or state of mind. 

The aim of the session will be to stimulate contemplation and a reflection on the sonic dimension of human experience and culture – and thereby the politics of the senses – and its artistic transposition. Do particular senses dominate? Or are our impressions co-constituted by the different senses? 

Producing a soundscape portraying a feeling-state, participants will have to attend to their sense-perception and reflect on the relationship between internal and external sensation, and how the senses – inside and outside- are related to our emotional lives. 

With this exercise we suggest a playful attempt at a sensorial ethnographic recording.

Materials needed :
smartphone, laptop (preferably preloaded with Audacity, a free sound editing software). 

If interested, send an email at : ethnographik@gmail.com specifying in the subject: “workshop-creation”

Hosted by Brian Mac Donncha and Mira Bossakova: 

Brian Mac Donncha and Mira Bossakova are graduates from an interdisciplinary social sciences programme in Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics at the University of Amsterdam, with a further specialisation in Anthropology. Since their graduation in 2021, they have studied at the University of Edinburgh, SciencesPo, and, most recently, McGill University, with their research interests converging around questions of affect and the senses, experimental methodologies, media and the city. 

These films are dotted with an exacerbated sensitivity that is staged through filmic experimentation, from animation to the sensoriality of imagined reality. These cinematographic works offer an intimate immersion in stories of yesterday and today, personal and shared. These filmic travels, these emotional journeys, do not leave one unscathed.

MOVIES

THE PLACE BETWEEN WAS AND WILL BE by THÉO PANAGOPOULOS (17 min) First canadian screening

THE PORTERS (Original title : De Dragers) by SARAH VANAGT (35 min) First canadian screening

On the sides of the velvet curtains, behind the action flap, on the edge of the fourth wall… what stagings and what theatricality for reality? Between a veiled revelation of the unspoken of cinematographic production and an ethnographic spectacle of the everyday, these moving films, belonging to different social universes, navigate the form of the “huis clos”, an enclosure with no exit.

MOVIES

LA GRIMACE (Original title: THE GRIN) by THÉO PANAGOPOULOS (18 min) First canadian screening

VAYCHILETIK by JUAN JAVIER PÉREZ (83 min) First canadian screening

Three films with dancing images that transport into rhythmic filmic worlds, interspersed by a desire for decoloniality. Cinema becomes choreography, words become music, and history is reconstructed in a critical manner. From Cuba to colonial Belgium, via Mexico, this session makes our present vibrate with its historical and political musicalities.

Screening followed by a discussion with filmmaker Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (to be confirmed).

MOVIES

LA TUMBA MAMBI by DJ Jigüe & Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier (28 min) First screening in North America

STREAMS OF SILENCE  (Original title: Trazos de silencio) by Valentina Pelayo Atilano (28 min) First canadian screening

UNDER THE WHITE MASK: THE FILM THAT HAESAERTS COULD HAVE MADE (Original title : ONDER HET WITTE MASKER: DE FILM DIE HAESAERTS HAD KUNNEN MAKEN ) by Matthias De Groof (9 min) First canadian screening

The ordinary, the everyday, the familiar, presented in an extraordinary way – exceptionally, grandly, and beautifully ordinary. From animated illustrations to sensory films, these cinematographic works invite viewers in through their great humanity. Touching, funny, experiential, they move us with the richness of their outlook on the daily pleasures and pains that are characteristic of the human experience.

MOVIES

EVEN ASTEROIDS ARE NOT ALONE by JÓN BJARKI MAGNÚSSON (17 min) 

SILENCES (Titre original : SILÊNCIOS) de CÉSAR PEDRO (24 min) First canadian screening

THROUGH HANDS OF MINE (Original title : RUKU MOJEJU) by KOŠTANA BANOVIĆ (72 min) First canadian screening

Indigenous filmmaking has been promoted for many years by filmmakers and organizations accompanying them in order to share the realities and issues Indigenous peoples face in defending their territories, throughout the world, and more particularly in the Americas. Our 19th edition’s Indigenous program features several films that have the common goal of sharing Indigenous realities through the medium of film. What do these works teach us, and how can they push the boundaries of contemporary ethnographic cinema?

Built in partnership with the McCord Museum and the Wapikoni Mobile, this theme is part of the Indigenous program of the 19th edition of FIFEQ-MTL, which focuses on the theme: Defending the Land in a Context of Climate Change. The theme and the proposed films were chosen in collaboration with two invited Indigenous filmmakers, David Hernandez Palmar, filmmaker from the Wayuu community (Venezuela/Colombia) and co-founder of the organization “If Not Us Then Who?“, and Katherine Nequado, filmmaker and student in Atikamekw film production from the Manawan community (Quebec).

MOVIES

ILNU AITUN AU FÉMININ by Amélie Courtois, presented in collaboration with Wapikoni Mobile (6 min)

ASKI, LA MÈRE DE TOUS by Amélie Courtois, presented in collaboration with Wapikoni Mobile (3 min)

SHA’À by Peregrino Shanocua Chaeta, presented in collaboration with “If Not Us Then Who?” First screening in Canada

PIATUA RESISTE by Yanda Inayu and Miguel Imbaquingo Chimarrom, presented in collaboration with “If Not Us Then Who?” First screening in Canada

At the end of the day, we will meet for our last festive evening before closing night around a live guitar performance by Cole James. This will be an opportunity to meet up to discuss and tell each other about the latest films seen in a pop, rock and alternative musical atmosphere.

Artist Descriptions:

Cole James Wynia is a twenty three year old progressive guitarist who specializes in pop, rock, punk and alternative guitar. With original songs that blend tones and techniques of past guitar players. While adding more modern influences.

On the sides of the velvet curtains, behind the action flap, on the edge of the fourth wall… what stagings and what theatricality for reality? Between a veiled revelation of the unspoken of cinematographic production and an ethnographic spectacle of the everyday, these moving films, belonging to different social universes, navigate the form of the “huis clos”, an enclosure with no exit.

MOVIE

PERPETUAL PERSON (Original title : PERSONA PERPETUA) by JAVIER BELLIDO VALDIVIA (104 min) First canadian screening

There are times when the camera becomes more than a tool for capturing images, and comes to fully assume a function of accompaniment, even therapy. Whether it accompanies the director or the people filmed in their journey, the camera is not meant to be an imposition. It is benevolent, it listens, it supports; it creates time-spaces where we take care of ourselves, of others, of our relationships.  Watching these films collectively is a way of extending the initial gesture and invites us to practice care.

MOVIE

THINGS I COULD NEVER TELL MY MOTHER by HUMAIRA BILKIS (84 min) First canadian screening

Organized in partnership with the festival courts d’un soir and presented in collaboration with Cinéma Sous les Étoiles

As a closing night to this 19th edition, you are welcome to the rooftop of the Rialto theater for an outdoor screening inviting you to discover fascinating new ways to film the ecosystems we inhabit. The seven short films curated into the evening’s program represent, each in their own way, what Scott McDonald has called eco-cinema: films that offer us new types of cinematographic experiences through their unconventional forms, and that contribute to nourishing a more attentive and environmentally-conscious state of mind. An invitation, therefore, to rediscover what surrounds us and to (re)think our ways of being in the world.

Screenings on the theme of filmic ecologies and panel discussion in the presence of film directors.

MOVIES

Là où mènent nos pas de Katherine Nequado and Ulysse Delsaute (10 min)

Deepest Darkness, Flaming Sun by Ella Morton (9 min)

Dreaming the environmental crisis by Anna Henry (14 min) First festival screening

Horticultural Time by Katrina Burch (16 min) First festival screening

An Urban Wild by Leo Stillinger (10 min)First festival screening

W8linaktegw ta niona by Myriam Landry, in collaboration with Wapikoni Mobile (7 min)

Discard what you heard by George W. Lenser, in collaboration with Wapikoni Mobile (5 min)