1h 5min | Documentary | 2018 | PG
Dir. Elizabeth Castle and Christina D. King
Pre-show Activities:
- Opening performance by All Nations Jr.’s Drum Group from Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre.
- Native Earth Performing Arts (NEPA) presents The Sash Maker, a performance produced by Rebecca Sadowski and Tamarra Lessard.
Watch youth short films from SKETCH Working Arts’ Tiny Adaptations: Transformative Justice Frame by Frame series and the Toronto Ward Museum’s Block by Block project, before the film.
This event is FREE and takes place online. Subscribe for free access by filling out the red form on our homepage HERE. If you’ve already subscribed for a previous online event, you can watch the film from the time it goes live until Wednesday August 26th 2021, 11:59PM.
Under the Stars programming is geo-blocked to Canada. You must be within Canada to access the events.
Film Synopsis:
In the 1970s, with the swagger of unapologetic Indianness, organizers of the American Indian Movement (AIM) fought for Native liberation and survival as a community of extended families.
Warrior Women is the story of Madonna Thunder Hawk, one such AIM leader who shaped a kindred group of activists’ children – including her daughter Marcy – into the “We Will Remember” Survival School as a Native alternative to government-run education. Together, Madonna and Marcy fought for Native rights in an environment that made them more comrades than mother-daughter. Today, with Marcy now a mother herself, both are still at the forefront of Native issues, fighting against the environmental devastation of the Dakota Access Pipeline and for Indigenous cultural values.
Through a circular Indigenous style of storytelling, this film explores what it means to navigate a movement and motherhood and how activist legacies are passed down and transformed from generation to generation in the context of colonizing government that meets Native resistance with violence.
About our pre-show programming:
Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre is an autonomous, vibrant cultural agency that involves and serves the Indigenous community with confidence for and commitment to their well-being. Toronto Council Fire’s All Nation Jr’s Drum Group is made up of participants 7-14 yrs old who meet regularly to practice drumming and singing. Some events they have performed in, include Council Fire 37th AGM, the PanAm Youth Summit at Dundas Square, CAMH Aboriginal Day Youth event, the 22nd Leonard Peltier Prayer Vigil/Event and Toronto’s closing TRC event at Queen’s Park.
Native Earth Performing Arts is Canada’s oldest professional Indigenous theatre company. Currently in our 38th year, we are dedicated to creating, developing and producing professional artistic expressions of the Indigenous experience in Canada. Native Earth Performing Arts, Film and Video Arts Society of Alberta and CANU Productions support in the making of The Sash Maker, produced by Rebecca Sadowski & Tamarra Lessard. An act of decolonization- Sadowski and Lessard put Métis and contemporary dance, Cree poetry, and traditional finger- weaving on the screen as a cinematic Lesson in Canadian History.
Rebecca Sadowski is an Edmonton-based Métis performer and creator. She has showcased her choreography with the Expanse Festival, Mile Zero Dance, the Nextfest Festival, Alberta Culture Days, Alberta Dance Alliance’s Feats Festival, and the Edmonton Fringe Festival. Rebecca is a new member of the Good Women Dance Collective and is the curator for dance programming for the Nextfest Festival with Theatre Network.
Tamarra Lessard is an award-winning documentary filmmaker based in Edmonton, CAN, whose work has taken her across the globe. Primarily working as a Director of Photography, Tamarra’s style is distinct, direct and decisive, with a strong focus on visual storytelling. Her journey as a filmmaker began with the exploration of human vulnerability and emotion through documentary.
Shorts :
Tiny Adaptations: Transformative Justice Frame by Frame is a series of short videos for social change produced by emerging filmmakers in the Transformation is Reel six month video arts residency hosted by SKETCH Working Arts. Facilitated by Jahmal Nugent & Naty Tremblay. Artists in residence were invited to explore through digital media what Transformative Justice means & could look like in these unprecedented times. The results are vulnerable, raw & visionary.
Block by Block is a participatory, multimedia program of the Toronto Ward Museum. We train young people to interview community members in their own neighbourhoods about their lived experiences of migration, settlement and civic life. Block by Block is thrilled to be working in Regent Park from 2019-2022 with support from the Regent Park Film Festival and Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre and grateful to all of the Regent Park community members who have contributed so far.
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