

By retracing the mixed heritage of First Nations peoples and Quebecers, painting a modern portrait, and sketching a human geography, this film helps us (re)discover the beauty and strength of our common territory: the Americas.

By retracing the mixed heritage of First Nations peoples and Quebecers, painting a modern portrait, and sketching a human geography, this film helps us (re)discover the beauty and strength of our common territory: the Americas.
2022-03-09
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Stan Hill Jr. is a Haudenosaunee artist living in Miawpukek First Nation Reserve, Conne River, Newfoundland. In “The Bear Inside a Whale,” he and his family discuss racism, identity, religion, creation and art, along with the cultural extinction of the Beothuk of Newfoundland. Throughout the film, we follow Stan carving a bear out of a whale vertebra. And we visit The Rooms (museum) in St. John’s, Newfoundland, where Stan talks about viewing and reclaiming Indigenous artefacts.
More than an attachment to our territory, the Innu live a filial relationship with Nitassinan, our ancestral homeland. For so many generations, the land has nourished, cared for and raised us. It has inspired our language, our culture, our lifeway and our vision of the world. Throughout the seasons, our ancestors criss-crossed the territory on foot, by canoe or on snowshoes. They knew every river, lake, or stream; every mountain, hill or bog; every camp, trail and portage path. Nomadism forged our people, and the film will record this journey and our history – past, present and future. And while it will attest to our vitality and resilience it is also – and above all – a tribute and a message of respect for the Earth.
0.0ARCTIC SUMMER is a poetic meditation on Tuktoyaktuk, an Indigenous community in the Arctic. The film captures Tuk during one of the last summers before climate change forced Tuk's coastal population to relocate to more habitable land.
10.0A documentary road movie. Traveling across his homeland, the filmmaker explores what Yakut cinema is, and what it means to the Sakha people and to himself.
0.0A young Navajo filmmaker investigates displacement of Indigenous people and devastation of the environment caused by the same chemical companies that have exploited the land where she was born. On this personal and political journey she learns from Indigenous activists across three continents.
3.0Gil Cardinal searches for his natural family and an understanding of the circumstances that led to his becoming a foster child. An important figure in the history of Canadian Indigenous filmmaking, Gil Cardinal was born to a Métis mother but raised by a non-Indigenous foster family, and with this auto-biographical documentary he charts his efforts to find his biological mother and to understand why he was removed from her. Considered a milestone in documentary cinema, it addressed the country’s internal colonialism in a profoundly personal manner, winning a Special Jury Prize at Banff and multiple international awards.
Yellowtail is the story of a young Native American cowboy searching for meaning as his chaotic lifestyle begins to wear on him both physically and mentally. To find his purpose the young man has to reflect on his upbringing as a native to become the spiritually connect man he was meant to be.
0.0Although the mountain volcano Mauna Kea last erupted around 4,000 years ago, it is still hot today, the center of a burning controversy over whether its summit should be used for astronomical observatories or preserved as a cultural landscape sacred to the Hawaiian people. For five years the documentary production team Nā Maka o ka 'Āina ("the eyes of the land") captured on video the seasonal moods of Mauna Kea's unique 14,000-foot summit, the richly varied ecosystems that extend from sea level to alpine zone, the legends and stories that reveal the mountain's geologic and cultural history, and the political turbulence surrounding the efforts to protect the most significant temple in the islands: the mountain itself.
0.0Steeped in the long oral tradition of Waorani storytelling, Gange Yeti shares her own coming-of-age story as a young Waorani woman living deep within the Amazon rainforest. Following Gange and her community for over 11 years, the film captures her transition from a quiet teenager into a confident young mother at a critical turning point for her culture and rainforest. As the granddaughter of one of the last Waorani elders that lived in complete isolation before outside contact, Gange is determined to capture her grandmother’s unique experience while she still can -- balancing school, motherhood, and tradition along the way.
9.5A documentary on the war between the Guatemalan military and the Mayan population, with first hand accounts by Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.
0.0Join Savage Films on an adventure in search of the best highball boulders on the West Coast of North America. Phenomenal cinematography takes you to five new world-class locales: Red Rocks NV, Leavenworth WA, Squamish BC, Cody WY, and Castle Rocks ID. Western Gold provides a thrilling view of the bouldering experience when climbers commit to harder moves higher and higher off the ground. From the hardest to the tallest the West Coast has to offer, get ready to see something new.
8.2A paralysingly beautiful documentary with a global vision—an odyssey through landscape and time—that attempts to capture the essence of life.
0.0This short documentary revisits Mi’kmaq territory, where an iconic moment was captured in 2013—igniting into a symbol of Indigenous resistance and halting fracking exploration on unceded lands.
5.9From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a president, the sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala’s recent history is told through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.
0.0Set against the vibrant spectacle of the jaripeo, a symbol of Mexican cowboy tradition and machismo, this story unveils a hidden world of queer desire and quiet rebellion. As glances and gestures disrupt the rigid norms of masculinity, the rodeo becomes a stage for our protagonists to navigate identity, community, and the search for belonging in an oppressively traditional space.
0.0A moving portrait of actress Tantoo Cardinal, travelling through time and across the many roles she’s played, capturing her strength and her impact—and how she shattered the glass ceiling and survived.
6.2Poet Layli Long Soldier crafts a searing portrait of her Oyate’s connection to the Black Hills, through first contact and broken treaties to the promise of the Land Back movement, in this lyrical testament to resilience of a nation.
4.5INAATE/SE/ re-imagines an ancient Ojibway story, the Seven Fires Prophecy, which both predates and predicts first contact with Europeans. A kaleidoscopic experience blending documentary, narrative, and experimental forms, INAATE/SE/ transcends linear colonized history to explore how the prophecy resonates through the generations in their indigenous community within Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With acute geographic specificity, and grand historical scope, the film fixes its lens between the sacred and the profane to pry open the construction of contemporary indigenous identity.
10.0In preparation for his first major retrospective at the Oklahoma Contemporary in 2025, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds reveals thoughts, formal approaches, and philosophies toward various works, including the oral history details behind his new wall installation work, Family, that continues his practice of 'primary' and 'ghost' printing.