Toronto is a hub of film festivals here in Canada. Apart from TIFF, After Dark, Hot Docs and TJFF, we also cover the imagineNATIVE Festival each year. The fest recently announced their line up which includes World Premieres, International Award-Winners & Buffy Sainte-Marie. Here is the press release. [vsw id=”KTP6FjIKizA” source=”youtube” width=”500″ height=”425″ autoplay=”no”] …
imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples in the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio and new media. Screenings, parties and panel discussions attract and connect filmmakers, media artists, programmers, buyers and industry professionals from around the world. The festival which runs in October has just announced their …
It is a bit unusual to review short films, but imagineNATIVE has a pretty cool series of shorts. In addition to shorts screened before features, the festival will be running several dedicated shorts programs, including a youth program, a late-night program, and a dance program. The shorts themselves cross many genres, such as drama, sci-fi, …
Boy Dir. Taika Waititi (2010, New Zealand, 85 mins.) Boy is not what one would expect from a coming-of-age story. Director Taika Waititi chooses to forgo the type of cinematic angst and melodrama the appeals to the MTV crowd; this film has no eyeliner or bubblegum punk. He as instead elected to portray childhood more …
La Pequeña Semilla en el Asfalto Dir. Pedro Daniel López López (2009, Mexico, 80 mins.) I have fairly mixed feelings on about this film. On the one hand, La Pequeña Semilla en el Asfalto is very successful at what it sets out to do: that is, portray the struggles of young indigenous Mexicans who leave …
Dreamland Dir. Ivan Sen (2010, Australia, 84 mins.) Dreamland is aptly titled; watching the film is much like watching a dream, albeit someone else’s dream. I make this distinction because, whist a dreamer instinctively knows what is happening in a dream without explanation, someone else trying to watch the same dream would be lost. This …
Starting on October 20th, Toronto will host films by and about indigenous peoples from around the world in one of the coolest film festivals this city has to offer – imagineNATIVE. The program is packed with narrative features, documentaries, and shorts by indigenous people from Canada, the USA, Australia, Greenland, New Zealand, Taiwan, Mexico, Brazil, …