racewin

[lobelia321]

So much has been written on racefail that I just want to say that last night t'h and I saw a fantastic film on DVD that is totally made of the awesome racewin. It is called Atanarjuat and was the first film made entirely in the Inuit language, filmed in Inuit territory in Canada, and made by Inuit film makers, crew and cast. Plus, it is a simply stunning aesthetic achievement.

I'd heard of this film for many years as a kind of answer to Nanook of the North, the amazing and very moving 1922 documentary of people in the Arctic region. But it's also more than that; it's fiction, based on an Inuit myth. It blends the fascinating ethnographic detail of material culture with a universal plot and theme. So you get wonderful scenes of women scraping the blood off hides and men spitting onto the runners of sledges to make the ice smooth and other such things plus you get a story that is very, very rooted in this strange, extreme, freezing cold, vegetation-starved environment but is at the same time totally accessible. Ultimately, the story (which I won't spoiler) reminded me of Helen of Troy.

What is really fabulous, though, and a very interesting, if modest, development in recent world film making is the strategy that some indigenous people are adopting (Atanarjuat and, in Australia, the fantastic Ten Canoes), and that is to set films in a mythic pre-colonial time. This does away with the whole problem of how to show the relationship of indigenous people to 'white' people, and allows a much freer and more nuanced treatment of the indigenous people as just 'people'.

There is still the potent force of the 'other'; both Atanarjuat and Ten Canoes interestingly feature a 'stranger' who appears and causes disruption in the community. I read this in a two-fold way: on the one hand, the 'stranger' is a classic narrative agent. A 'stranger' arriving to disrupt an equilibrium is one of the key ways of getting a narrative going. On the other hand, I also find it fascinating to consider the role of the stranger in pre-modern societies. These were communities (and we all go back to that kind of community, ultimately) where there were no strangers. There were no cities or towns or villages or hamlets. There was just a tiny family/kinship unit, where every single person counts for the purposes of survival, where everyone knows everyone, and where compromises with people whom you don't get on with or with people who are downright bad are essential for survival.

The 'stranger' in this context of a tiny community takes on a whole different meaning. There simply were no strangers so anyone unknown becomes an almost otherworldly, demonic, scary force, a thing-that-cannot-be. At one point, in Atanarjuat, the hero arrives in a distant place and is taken in by some 'strangers' but it very quickly turns out that they are not real strangers at all: 'Are you not the son of Sauri? Sauri and I share the same grandmother.' A relationship is soon established, and the stranger is, as it were, 'un-strangered'.

To get back to the point about these being all-indigenous representations. Here you have strangers but they are strangers within the context of their culture. They are not white others, and there is no 'othering' of the indigenous people. I love that.

It reminds me of the novels by Amitav Ghosh, and especially of his marvellous novel-cum-ethnographic study-cum-travelogue-cum-history book, In an Antique Land which is about the trade relations between Egyptian Jews and Indian Hindus in the Middle Ages, a network of relations that completely operated outside the purview of European influence.

And as if you need another incentive, but: Atanarjuat features total frontal male nudity.

Hooray for un-coy non-commercial films!

P.S. Does anybody know a good Native American / Native Canadian / First Nation Peoples film?

Comments

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

I saw that, oh, man, ages ago. I liked it! And I remember some of the scenes made me shiver.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I found the naked man running across the ice very powerful. It reminded me of the shock of nakedness and the power of it, and of course, at the level of myth, the 'naked' hero has to prevail over the lumbering, clothed ones chasing him. It is as if his nakedness confers magical powers. Also, the fact that in film (unlike in novels or fic) there is always the added realness of knowing this is a 'real' actor running across real ice on his real naked feet.

The landscapes also were stunning, and when the women discovered the ravaged tent and the wife shouted 'Atanarjuat! Atanarjuat!' I kept thinking about this film all night and today.

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

My first two off the top of my head reccomendations are Dance Me Outside and Smoke Signals.

And I know you were asking about movies, but for writers I reccomend Thomas King and Thomson Highway.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I did scout around a little and found Smoke Signals. I also came across comments that suggested that good Native American films were hard to come by, that Smoke Signals inspired no legacy in a way, and it seemed to me that there is still a high level of muteness for these communities and a difficulty of finding a voice. I'd like to find out more about it, though. I was shocked, I have to say, when I read Obama's book (not the father one, the other one) and found that Native Americans appeared nowhere. The index listed all sorts of other ethnic minorities but not this one, and the text itself made no reference. It kept referring to the original sin of African slavery, but I think that this was preceded by an even earlier original sin. I was interested in noting that this was occluded in Obama's book and wonder whether that is perhaps symptomatic and that is why there is perhaps relatively little cultural self-representation.

On the other hand, I may just know too little. Many of these things don't make it across the pond.

Thanks for these recs!!

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

As a Canadian it's kind of inconceivable to hear about no references when talking about ethnic minorities; you can't really separate First Nations history and Canadian history.

(Another novel I reccomend is Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden. I keep remembering things I want others to read.)

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I have a suspicion that Canada might be dealing with this issue in a way that's more congenial. Perhaps because the history is a bit different from the American one; but again, I am quite ignorant so may be talking through my hat.

[4jinx-removing.livejournal.com]

Dance Me Outside is brilliant! I love that movie. Another great native film is 'Medicine River' with Graham Greene.

[prairiedaun.livejournal.com]

I haven't seen that, but the novel is brilliant.

<3 Thomas King.

ETA: For traditional oral history stories I really should reccomend Louis Bird, both the books and the website http://www.ourvoices.ca/index He's an Omushkego Cree elder who's been recording stories for decades and they've been working on transcribing and translating them and making them available for both people within his comunity and others who want to listen.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, I'm bookmarking all of this so that I can get back to it and go through all of these properly.

[trickofthedark.livejournal.com]

I loved that film so SO much!

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

Oh, you know it too! I was so fascinated by it; it's quite long but I was glued to it the whole way through. And what I forgot to say is that I loved the ending. Having watched a zillion Hollywood films, one starts to think that revenge always has to prevail and that it's an eye for an eye and that the baddie has to be killed at the end. But in this film the hero was a hero precisely because he restored order by breaking the killing chain and sparing them. I found that so deeply, deeply satisfying and right.

[sheldrake.livejournal.com]

Oh, I want to see this - must add it to my list. I knew of it, but it went off my radar. I love, love, loved Ten Canoes!

P.S. Does anybody know a good Native American / Native Canadian / First Nation Peoples film?

I'm also looking for something like this - or books, actually.

[lobelia321.livejournal.com]

I loved loved Ten Canoes, too, and saw it twice in the cinema and then again on an in-flight entertainment console (!). And I loved this one too so if you loved Ten Canoes you will probably love this one.

Some people above have recced some Native American/Canadian films and novels, too, so scroll upwards!