May. 28, 2008 - Issue #658: Beija Flor

Dreamspeakers Film Festival

Dreamspeakers’ openers need depth

If the immigrants to North America tried to beat the aboriginal population down, the church was the blunt instrument they used to do it; it  isn’t terribly surprising, then, that the two films that open the annual Dreamspeakers Film Festival not only deal with the church’s continuing impact on the lives of aboriginals, but also have little in the way of sympathy   for its machinations. What is a bit surprising is that, even in mining a rich vein, neither works particularly well.

Gerald Auger’s Honour Thy Father (SS, 7 pm, Metro Cinema) follows the director’s attempts to give his father a proper Cree burial in spite of the fact the Anglican church, of which he was ostensibly a member, forbids it. Though this is obviously a profoundly powerful story for Auger, he has trouble broadening it, both in terms of connecting us with his feelings of loss and in terms of contributing to a wider socio-political dialogue.

That’s likely because the central story in Father is more personal than indicative of the current political climate in Canada. Though Auger’s local priest denies them the right to perform the ceremony, the Anglican archbishop he talks to is sympathetic—though he does ultimately renege on a promise to speak with the priest personally—and Auger himself points out that the reserve’s Catholic Church happily includes Indian traditions in their ceremonies. Ultimately, Father comes off as little more than a personal problem put on film, without the benefit of connecting the viewer to the emotions of the story.

Still, at least Father is a respectful, sober-minded take on the aftermath of the church’s doings; it seems a bit strong to call Georgina Lightning’s Older Than America (SS, 7 pm, Metro Cinema) exploitative, but I can’t think of a more accurate description for a film that essentially turns the atrocities of residential schools into a particularly wooden, rez-centric episode of CSI, in both look and feel.

Loosely centred around Rain (Lightning herself), a woman who worries her increasingly vivid dreams and occasional visions are pushing her down the same path as her schizophrenic, institutionalized mother, the film slowly reveals two nefarious forces at work, each attempting to keep down the aboriginal population in its own way. The slightly less benign one is the smalltown mayor who wants to turn rightful Native land into a moneymaking resort; the more diabolicial one is the church, here represented by a priest who is practically evil incarnate, a mommy-poisoning, amoral bastard who will go to any lengths to keep the church’s secrets (literally) buried.

There is no doubt rich drama to be found in the story of residential schools, but Lightning’s film isn’t the one to unearth it; full of easy, broad strokes and tiredly derivative cinematography, it’s a film that very nearly does a serious disservice to the issues it’s ostensibly trying to illuminate. V

Wed, Jun 4 - Sat, Jun 7
Dreamspeakers Film Festival
Featuring Older than America,
Honour thy Father, Smoke From His Fire, Tkaronto, others
Metro Cinema/Stanley Milner Library

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