Curator: Ezra Winton (Cinema Politica)
Name artist: Réal Junior Leblanc
Title of the work: Uprooted Generation
Year of production: 2013
Format: Video
Documentary/Canada/07:02
We are very glad that Ezra Winton of Cinema Politica from Canada selected this film 'uprooted generation' for us. The reason why he selected this film for our page 'Politics and Poetry' is very clear: The film is part poem and part documentary, dedicated to the victims of residential schools. The film includes reflections on cultural disconnection, personal and community trauma, resilience, and the healing power of art.
About you (the curator)
Function: Co-founder and Director of Programming for Cinema Politica and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University
Country: Canada
What is the aim of Cinema Politica: Our objectives can be summed up as such: (1) To showcase and disseminate under-represented and at-the-margins independent political film and video in Canada and around the world; (2) To harness documentary’s dialogic aspects at screening events where we invite the filmmaker, local activists and audiences to engage in lengthy post-screening discussions; (3) To use the power of political cinema to connect audiences to civil society projects, campaigns and activist initiatives at our screenings;
We understood that Cinema Politica is having its 10th anniversary this year. Have you noticed any significant changes in the last ten years (within political documentary film and/or activism)? We celebrated our ten year anniversary in 2013-2014, and marked that occasion by publishing a book called Screening Truth to Power: A Reader on Documentary Activism (more here: www.cinemapolitica.org/documentaryactivismbook). In our book we look back on a decade of programming political documentary and comment on challenges, triumphs, and changes in the field. What we have noticed is that since we started in 2003 more quality, hard-hitting, political films are being made than ever. We’ve also noticed that audiences continue to search for ways to encounter these films, but thanks to continued state-sanctioned cuts to the arts in Canada and elsewhere, accessible and independent venues and platforms ITRW (In the Real World) are diminishing. On the other hand we’ve seen the documentary genre increasingly commercialized by festivals and broadcasters, and cannibalized by mainstream NGOS – the impact of these forces is watered-down politics, Hollywood-style tropes (like emotionally manipulative music and celebrity subjects) and market-friendly perspectives (best summed up as system-reforming instead of system-dismantling). So all those doc-hungry audiences looking for strong, beautiful and provocative political cinema, are increasingly going online. This has other consequences, but I won’t get into them here…
What can you tell about this film? Uprooted Generation is a stunning short, combining the personal with the political and the poetic in order to reflect upon the devastating impact of the Canadian government’s Residential School program. Leblanc weaves in expressions of identity, trauma and resistance in a work that confronts Canada’s terrible colonial past and powerfully links the past with the present, using personal voice over, archival images and contemporary testimony to convey that trauma and oppression are far from over for the Indigenous people of Turtle Island (North America) – yet neither is the fight for self-determination, equal rights, respect and dignity. [On a side note I’d like to thank Wapikoni Mobile who have provided the platform for me to encounter this amazing work]
You like to draw attention to the new indigenous work being done in Canada and how grounded it is in poetry, history, politics and healing. Can you explain more about this? As a programmer who sees hundreds of films each year, I have seen so many works made by non-Indigenous artists attempting to depict and represent the images and stories of Indigenous people. Some of these films are very good, but what we—as programmers, curators, festival managers, funding agents, filmmakers and others working in the arts sector—need to fight for and work toward is self-representation. The tools of production and the platforms for dissemination must be re-oriented toward fair and just representation. Indigenous artists on Turtle Island have never stopped making important art, art full of poetry and political voice, but at this moment, on the heels of Idle No More and during a period where the current Canadian government continues to shirk responsibility with regards to the many missing and murdered Indigenous women or the precarious First Nations communities in peril, it is now more than ever that we have a chance to support Indigenous art, and especially political filmmaking.
Work like Leblanc’s deploys politics and poetry to engage in a storytelling that interprets remembrance, healing and response as a collective response to massive injustice. But healing cannot take place if injustices are not addressed and if inequity is not trampled. Settler cultures in Canada need to put more pressure on our government, on our cultural institutions and ourselves to better serve the needs and aims of Indigenous artists working today and into the future.
How does this film relate to the theme ‘politics and poetry’ in your opinion? Uprooted Generation is political because it addresses injustices and harm with a powerful subjective voice. It is poetic because that voice is lyrical, reflexive and thoughtful. The combination of the two has the effect, for me, of both agitation and activation and ultimately provokes in me a response. I think it is especially political in the way it confronts both history and the audience, and does so in a layered, thoughtful and visually compelling way.
Do you think a political film needs poetry in it? Or the other way around; does poetry need to be political? I do not think these two qualities are essential, in terms of co-existence in film. But I do think political films without some poetic aspect risk becoming journalistic reportage or show-and-tell - a slide show of images and voice over. Documentary is not only the transference of information, it is the articulation of emotion and the creative representation or artful re-imagination of actuality. That is, it is the vehicle for affect as much as effect.
Europe seems to be confronted with even more serious political/economical tensions and problems than 10 years ago. How do you experience world politics today in Canada? Well I’m writing these responses from the very excellent Docudays UA film festival in Kiev, Ukraine, and I can tell you artistic/activist responses to political turmoil in this part of the world is alive and kicking. Europe faces some of its biggest challenges at the moment, and most of those have been caused by decades of elitist policies that are always, by design, meant to entrench the comfortable and enclose the commons.
War over resources, corporate power, government corruption and the ongoing marginalization of and violence against migrants are but a few of the major problems facing people in Europe in 2015. Yet the present moment can also be characterizes by the largest social movements and mass mobilization of civil society toward progressive goals that have been seen in a long time. These movements include cultural workers and artists – they are many, and continue to fight against media conglomerates and political oligarchs to have their message heard and seen.
As for Canada, we experience world politics in the same way as so many others: through a combination of alternative, independent and corporate news media. We have one of the most concentrated media environments in the world, and those seeking diverse or divergent viewpoints and voices must, for the most part, look to the internet for sources. We have a robust alternative mediascape in this country, thankfully, and with radical art, alt media and independent documentary, we can patch together a progressive, critical lens through which to view world politics.
Do you have any knowledge of the work of Joris Ivens and how does Cinema Politica relate to that? Yes, I have seen films by Ivens, read about the director (and I’m waiting in anticipation for a new work by Thomas Waugh, hopefully coming out soon) and have been inspired by his representations of the poor and working poor in various parts of the globe. I think the ways in which Ivens distills and translates his own ideological impulses toward socialism, equality and justice through moving and thoughtful audio-visual artworks resonates with the work we do at Cinema Politica. We screen truth to power (by showing films) and he spoke/showed truth to power (by making films). We are therefore long-distance (temporally at least) cousins, or dare I say, comrades.
http://www.cinemapolitica.org/