Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
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Worldwide, catch up with two Indigenous film highlights of the year: Portraits from a Fire and Daughter of a Lost Bird. Also catch up with Caroline Monnet's short film Tshieutin streaming worldwide on YouTube. In Canada, catch up with Indigenous sci-fi film Night Raiders.
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A showcase of six short films by Anishnaabe/French filmmaker Caroline Monnet from so-called Canada are now streaming on the Criterion Channel. Her first feature, Bootlegger, is in Quebec cinemas at the moment, but we were big fans and will keep you posted on future VOD/international roll out. One of these films, Tshiuetin, is also streaming free worldwide on YouTube.
In the meantime, her shorts are a great place to start with her work, and I especially recommend the film Tshiueten, which was one of my favourite shorts to screen at TIFF 2016.
Here's my review:
Shot in black and white, Caroline Monnet’s Tshiuetin takes us on the 12-hour train journey from Sept-ïles to Schefferville in Northern Quebec. The railway is owned by a group of First Nations, the first of its kind in Canadian history, and it connects remote First Nations communities to Southern Quebec where they go to buy groceries and other supplies. It’s a snapshot into a lesser known part of recent Canadian history, and the snowy sights along the journey are breathtaking.
Click here to watch on YouTube worldwide
This Indigenous sci-fi film is a smart allegory for exploring the trauma of residential "schools" in so-called Canada, especially the toll they took on parents. It also stars actress-writer-director and Seventh Row favourite Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, who appeared on our Lockdown Film School last year.
Here's an excerpt from the intro to my interview with writer-director Danis Goulet:
One of our favourite films from HotDocs is now screening worldwide this weekend.
Here's an excerpt from Orla's review:
Click here for tickets worldwide until Nov 10.
This Indigenous film from so-called Canada is bursting with visual ideas and well worth checking out despite some flaws. It'll be out on VOD in Canada next week, but AFAIK has no plans for international distribution so this could be on of the only chances to see it.
Tsilhqot'in filmmaker Trevor Mack's feature debut, Portraits from a Fire, is a hugely ambitious film about family trauma, coming of age, and memory. The film follows sixteen-year-old Tyler (William Magnus Lulua) who dreams of becoming a filmmaker, and makes his own movies by himself using an old camcorder he found in his house. Tyler is mostly left to his own devices; his mother is no longer around, and his father is largely absent for work. When Tyler discovers footage of his parents when they were young, it sparks questions about the lies of omission about what happened to his mother.
There's a dreamy quality to the film, which uses digital glitches in thoughtful ways to look at the link between video footage and memory. It's also enormously funny and entertaining at times, hugely steeped in place and culture, and also heartbreaking. It doesn't always work, with some particularly poor dialogue, at times, but the performances are uniformly great. The film's many thoughtful visual ideas make Trevor Mack a major talent to watch behind the camera.
Happy watching!
Best,
Alex Heeney, Editor-in-Chief
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Seventh Row is a nonprofit Canadian film criticism publication and publishing house. We're dedicated to helping you expand your horizons by curating the best socially progressive films from around the world and helping you think deeply about them. This newsletter is run by Seventh Row (http://seventh-row.com) but features exclusive content not found on the website.
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