The Rise of First Nations’ Fiction Films: Shelley Niro, Jeff Barnaby, and Yves Sioui Durand

Abstract

Since the 1960s, when First Nations crews began training at the National Film Board, indigenous filmmaking — mostly in the form of documentaries — has generally taken place on the margins of mainstream production in Québec. While the commitment to addressing native issues and portraying native lives of NFB documentarists like Alanis Obomsawin has been of immeasurable social and aesthetic value, recent productions have shown a veritable thirst among native peoples to tell their stories and cultural heritage through a fictional frame. This essay profiles three First Nations directors whose recent productions have included fictional film. Mohawk artist and filmmaker Shelley Niro has made several films that deal with Native women who are trying to find their way in a modern world without losing sight of who they are. Kissed by Lightening is her first, award-winning, full-length feature and offers a synthesis of several themes present in her previous work. Jeff Barnaby, a Mi'gmaq filmmaker, has made three short subjects that all deal with identity questions, but from a male perspective, and is currently editing his first feature, Rhymes for Young Ghouls. Finally, Yves Sioui Durand, whose 2012 feature, Mesnak, is billed as the first Native feature film made in Québec, offers yet another example of how a creative artist, this time from the Huron-Wendat community of Wendake, gives voice to the identity crisis experienced by so many of his people who have lost touch with their culture, community or family in the vortex of modern urban life. While focusing on such key questions as identity and language, this essay also examines how native fiction film differs or borrows from the “Hollywood medium” that has exploited the “reel Injun,” to quote the title of Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond's documentary on the subject, for over a hundred years.