Habilito: Debt for Life

Documents the conflicts and tensions that arise between highland migrants and Mosetenes, members of an indigenous community in the Bolivian Amazon. It focuses particularly on a system of debt peonage known locally as ‘habilito’. This system is used throughout the Bolivian lowlands, and much of the rest of the Amazon basin, to secure labor in remote areas.

2010-08-25 | es

The Spirit of the Tsilqot'in People is Hovering over the Supreme Court

The Tŝilhqot’in Nation is represented by six communities in the stunningly beautiful interior of British Columbia. Surrounded by mountains and rivers, the Tŝilhqot’in People have cared for this territory for millennia. With increasing external pressures from natural-resource extraction companies, the communities mobilized in the early 21st century to assert their rightful title to their lands. Following a decision by the Supreme Court of British Columbia in 2007 that only partially acknowledged their claim, the Tŝilhqot’in Nation’s plight was heard in the Supreme Court of Canada. In a historic decision in 2014, the country’s highest court ruled what the Tŝilhqot’in have long asserted: that they alone have full title to their homelands.

2023-12-01 | en

Augusta

This short documentary is the portrait of an 88-year-old woman who lives alone in a log cabin without running water or electricity in the Williams Lake area of British Columbia. The daughter of a Shuswap chief, Augusta lost her Indian status as the result of a marriage to a white man. She recalls past times, but lives very much in the present. Self-sufficient, dedicated to her people, she spreads warmth wherever she moves, with her songs and her harmonica.

1976-01-01 | en

The Lost Children

After a plane crash, four indigenous children fight to survive in the Colombian Amazon using ancestral wisdom as an unprecedented rescue mission unfolds.

2024-11-13 | es

Highway to the Arctic

Every winter for decades, the Northwest Territories, in the Canadian Far North, changes its face. While the landscape is covered with snow and lakes of a thick layer of ice, blocking land transport, ice roads are converted to frozen expanses as far as the eye can see.

2017-02-21 | de

Carnets d’un Black en Ayiti

1998-12-22 | fr

Iniskim - Return of the Buffalo

A cinematic wonder & incredible opportunity to learn about Indigenous ways of knowing. A group of puppeteers are transformed by their experience of "being buffalo" at night under the stars. Amethyst First Rider tells the puppeteers, "You are the buffalo. With each movement of your hands, each connection, you're creating energy & they become a part of you." In 2017 history was made when bison were reintroduced to Banff National Park where they continue to roam free today. The project was part of the historic Buffalo Treaty, with over 40 First Nation signatories, who are part of the movement to bring buffalo back to their ancestral lands. Leroy Little Bear & Amethyst First Rider lead this movement, & since Amethyst is first & foremost an artist, she wanted to celebrate the return of the buffalo through art. She met master puppeteer, Pete Balkwill, who was working with sculptural lantern puppets with his collaborators that lent themselves to night time performances on the land

2024-09-20 | en

Imagining the Indian: The Fight Against Native American Mascoting

Examining the movement that is ending the use of Native American names, logos, and mascots in the world of sports and beyond.

2021-01-14 | en

Our Indians

Yndio do Brasil is a collage of hundreds of Brazilian films and films from other countries - features, newsreels and documentaries - that show how the film industry has seen and heard Brazilian indigenous peoples since they were filmed in 1912 for the first time: idealised and prejudiced, religious and militaristic, cruel and magic.

1995-01-16 | pt

Our People Will Be Healed

Legendary documentary filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin provides a glimpse of what action-driven decolonization looks like in Norway House, one of Manitoba's largest First Nation communities.

2017-09-07 | en

Through the Repellent Fence: A Land Art Film

The film follows Postcommodity, an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martinez and Kade L. Twist, who put land art in a tribal context. The group bring together a community to construct the Repellent Fence, a two-mile long ephemeral monument “stitching” together the US and Mexico.

2017-02-19 | en

Ainu Puri

Shigeki, one of the Ainu people of northern Japan, follows the traditions of his ancestors and teaches his son Motoki about their heritage. But how can old customs be revived after centuries of suppression?

2024-12-14 | ja

Tawai: A Voice from the Forest

Explorer Bruce Parry visits nomadic tribes in Borneo and the Amazon in hope to better understand humanity's changing relationship with the world around us.

2017-09-29 | en

Shellmound

“Shellmound” is the story of how one location was transformed from a sacred center of pre-historic cultures to a commercial mecca for modern people. What began as a Native American burial ground three thousand years ago, was transformed first into an amusement park, and later an industrial age paint factory. Now, the tainted ancient soil sits beneath the glittering lights of Banana Republic, Victoria’s Secret, and the AMC movie theaters. “Shellmound” examines the decisions made during the recent toxic cleanup, excavation, and construction of the Bay Street mall through the eyes of the city of Emeryville, the developer, the archaeologists, and the native Californians who worked on the site.

2004-09-19 | en

This Was the Time

When Masset, a Haida village in Haida Gwaii (formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands), held a potlatch, it seemed as if the past grandeur of the people had returned. This is a colourful recreation of Indigenous life that faded more than two generations ago when the great totems were toppled by the missionaries and the costly potlatch was forbidden by law. The film shows how one village lived again the old glory, with singing, dancing, feasting, and the raising of a towering totem as a lasting reminder of what once was.

1970-01-01 | en

Phantoms of the Sierra Madre

A Danish writer travels to Mexico with the purpose of locating a mysterious Apache tribe that fervently seeks to remain in obscurity.

2024-09-20 | en

The Pearl Button

The ocean contains the history of all humanity. The sea holds all the voices of the earth and those that come from outer space. Water receives impetus from the stars and transmits it to living creatures. Water, the longest border in Chile, also holds the secret of two mysterious buttons which were found on its ocean floor. Chile, with its 2,670 miles of coastline and the largest archipelago in the world, presents a supernatural landscape. In it are volcanoes, mountains and glaciers. In it are the voices of the Patagonian Indigenous people, the first English sailors and also those of its political prisoners. Some say that water has memory. This film shows that it also has a voice.

2015-10-15 | es

Tunniit: Retracing the Lines of Inuit Tattoos

Inuit traditional face tattoos have been forbidden for a century, and almost forgotten. Director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, together with long-time friend and activist Aaju Peter, is determined to uncover the mystery and meaning behind this beautiful ancient tradition. Together they embark on an adventure through Arctic communities, speaking with elders and recording the stories of a once popularized female artform. Central to the film is Arnaquq-Baril’s personal debate over whether or not to get tattood herself. With candour and humour, she welcomes us into her world, to experience firsthand the complex emotions that accompany her struggle. Past meets present in this intimate account of one woman’s journey towards self-empowerment and cultural understanding.

2011-01-01 | en

Sunny Boy

Arthur Guérin-Boëri is suffocating in his local swimming pool. His swim lane has become a dead end. The French athlete, multiple world champion in dynamic apnea, decides to leave the warmth of his pool and plunge into the frozen waters of a Finnish lake to set a new record. His journey then led him to immerse himself almost naked under a block of ice, in an attempt to set a new record in the icy waters of a Canadian lake. In his quest for legitimacy, which brings him close to death on several occasions, Arthur ends up finding himself.

2023-02-09 | fr

Monica in the South Seas

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

2023-11-03 | fi