The Embargo Collective II – a new short film series from kick-ass Indigenous women, coming to imagineNATIVE in October 2014!
My first blog ever – whereby in a meandering fashion that I hope a blog permits, I somehow ask, and then answer, by trying to avoid answering: the question I hate most (when it comes to talking about film).
Lisa, Elle-Maija, Alethea, Caroline, me, and our leader Danis – The Embargo Collective II. I’m so proud and honoured to belong to such an amazing group of women, and to such a fantastic project. Wa’tkwanonhwerá:ton to the collective, and wa’tkonnonhwerá:ton to you, Danis – for dreaming this up, and for having me be a part of it. (I give you respect and gratitude).
Embargo Collective is all about rules designed to free you up creatively. We even give each other permission to fail. The whole point is to try stuff and be free. We get together for a few days to get the ball rolling. Sounds pretty easy. But man, it was intense! We watched all of each others work back to back, which took a couple of days. And then we just sat back and were like, “whoa…”. We all felt exhausted, and we all cried at various points. I realized on leaving for lunch one day that I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t chit-chat. I was still processing all the amazing work I watched. All of the work belonged together, though vastly different in genre and subject matter. And then I realized my anxieties were gone, and replaced by this thing in the air. It wasn’t camaraderie that made me belong (though we had that!). It wasn’t subject matter that made the work fit together – because it was all so different. So what was this thing in the air that made us all feel the need to take a break?
I realized that we all felt bogged down and I said, “Hey guys! You know how we just watched all each other’s movies? Well – we just collectively processed a combined 3000 years of colonization in 2 days. That’s 500 years times 6 people’s films.” And we all laughed. Because it was true. At least it was for me. I make comedies.
I joke, but, we all make work that speaks to who we are as human beings on this earth in this time. And we happen to be the product of hundreds of years of super-loaded history. And for some of us, the most recent acts of genocide against our people – the residential school system – was just one generation ago. In this small group of women, some of our own mothers survived residential school. Think about that for a second.
For the rest of us, most of our grandparents were/are residential school survivors. And some of us speak our languages, and some of us are removed from our cultures. Some of us live in big cities, some of us in the far North or on reserve. We’re all different. But we all make work in the context of who we are. This isn’t to say that any of us made films that are blatant on-the-nose discussions of colonization. I mean; I showed a 4-minute Mohawk version of Star Wars that I made for the web. But when you watch the body of work back to back there’s a feeling of going through a great journey that is inescapable.
That’s what sitting in that room with those women, for our Embargo Collective week-long meeting was like. It was like being on that milk-run flight where you stop in every city before you get to your final destination – but the best milk-run ever. (And there’s good snacks and comfy chairs.) Watching the body of work as a whole was like going on a journey. And talking it through was another leg of the journey. And then supporting each other and figuring out each other rules was another leg. We traveled together. And I feel sometimes, like that’s what we do as filmmakers – you have to experience the journey of another person to be able to tell the story for the screen. It’s having empathy for miles. It’s walking in someone else’s moccasins. That’s such a cheese thing to say. But I mean it. And I keep saying journey. Sorry.
Zoe’s film Mohawk Midnight Runners won best short film at 2013′s imagineNATIVE Festival
This is why I feel kind of deflated when people ask me questions about what I feel is the state of “Native cinema” or “What is Indigenous Cinema?” Onékwa ónhte! (holy peas!) I can’t stand that question. Maybe if I only had one eye and wore a patch I could be further marginalized into a Visible Minority Native Pirate Women in Film circle. The question deflates me because I feel like if you have to ask the question, then you don’t get it. You’re not on the journey. It feels almost exactly like the question, “What’s it like to be an Indian?” How can you answer that? I wish I could answer it like this, “Oh man, it’s a trip. It’s an experience. It’s processing colonization every day all the time in some way, somehow, whether you know it or not, whether you’re trying to or not. Like I’m even doing it right now because you just asked me that damn question. See?” The question itself kind of misunderstands the subject. It’s not the same as asking, “What is Italian Neo-realism and German Expressionism?” Those film movements were defined by a much easier set of parameters. You can study them in a text at school. Plus they’re kind of over.
I think it’s wonderful that people want to write about Native Cinema and Onkwehonwe filmmakers. I agree from time to time to do an interview on the subject. But I always feel uncomfortable. Ultimately I don’t really know the answer to “what is Indigenous Cinema”. And I hate talking about my work. (Hence avoiding that entirely in this blog). I think the best answer might be just to congratulate the person on recognizing the thing in the air. Maybe recognizing it means they are on the journey after all, and maybe I shouldn’t hate the question. Maybe I should just acknowledge it the same way that the question itself acknowledges that this journey is happening. I’m totally going to try that. Next time someone asks me, “What is Indigenous Cinema?” I’ll say, “It’s happening.” Sounds like the 60’s, though. Maybe I can get away with it if I don’t flash a peace sign at the same time.
Zoe won TIFF’s Star Wars video contest by shooting the trash compactor scene in Mohawk
Anyway… Off I go with my collective-imposed restrictions: make a surreal film with a small crew of people I’ve never worked with before, using non-synch sound, in-camera effects or hand-made props/costumes ie – some sort of arts and crafts or handmade element, influenced in someway by the films of my fellow Embargo Collective member, Caroline Monnet. To sum up the rules I was given by the group: I’m scared. Until I remember the point of the whole collective – to experiment without fear of failure.
So, I’ve come up with a script. And surprisingly though the whole surreal thing and working with new people are both foreign to me, I’ve written a script that is the most personal I’ve ever gotten on screen. I’ve never written anything auto-biographical before – I’ve always wanted to stay away from making the personal film that a lot of emerging filmmakers do in the beginning. I wanted to avoid barfing my guts on to the screen and have other people watch it. How awful! But here’s to being willing to fail, and feeling like I get to be part of this bigger thing, whatever it may be.
- Zoe Hopkins
Zoe Hopkins was born in a small and remote Heiltsuk fishing village on the coast of BC. A graduate of the film program at Ryerson, she now lives in Six Nations, Ontario and is a fluent Mohawk language speaker. Her first short film, Prayer for a Good Day, was an official selection at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. That year she became the first Canadian filmmaker to attend the Feature Film Program at the Sundance Institute, where she workshopped her feature film script, Cherry Blossoms. Her latest short, Mohawk Midnight Runners won best short film at the imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Film Festival in Toronto, the Audience Award at the Dawson City International Short Film Festival, and is nominated for two Golden Sheaf Awards at Yorkton for Best Aboriginal production, and Best Drama. As a member of the Embargo Collective, Zoe is in development with a new Mohawk-language short film, which will air on Bravo and APTN, and will premiere at imagineNative in the fall of 2014. Hopkins is currently in development with her feature film script, Running Home; a feature comedic film, with Toronto based Big Soul Productions.
Stay tuned for the next instalment of The Embargo Collective II Blog by filmmakers in the coming weeks!
imagineNATIVE is an international Festival that celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples at the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio and new media. Each fall, the Festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from Canada and around the globe. The works accepted reflect the diversity of the world’s Indigenous nations and illustrate the vitality and excellence of our art and culture in contemporary media. Last year, imagineNATIVE presented 127 works, and had 70+ artists and 15,558 people in attendance at the Festival. 15th Annual festival will take place October 22 – 26, 2014 at various locations in downtown Toronto. www.imaginenative.org / facebook.com/imagineNATIVE / @imagineNATIVE
