Abstracts
Abstract
The relationship between Québécois cinema, memory and territory has existed for decades. This article demonstrates how Indigenous peoples continue to occupy an important space in the economy of representations (real and imagined) situated within Québécois cinema. In recent years, contemporary documentaries that address Indigenous peoples such as Québékoisie (Mélanie Carrier and Olivier Higgins, 2014) and L’empreinte (Carole Poliquin, 2015), have changed their general tone (at least superficially) but have nonetheless extended the image which positions the Amérindien as a mirror for the fraught identity of the French-Canadians living in Québec. Through the analysis of both contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous films, this article identifies the configurations of this quest for Indigenous identity in Québécois documentary films and in Arnait Video Production films, through the reconfiguration and re-imagination of intercultural relationships.
Keywords:
- Indigenous cinema,
- Quebec cinema,
- intercultural collaborations,
- colonialism,
- Indigenous representation,
- identity
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Appendices
Biographical notes
Karine Bertrand is an Associate Professor in the Film and Media department of Queen’s University and co-director, with Florian Grandena (UOttawa) of the inter-university research group EPIC (Esthétique et politique de l’image cinématographique). Her research interests are centered around Indigenous cinema and decolonization, Quebec cinema and memory, contemporary road movies and women on the road and transnational cinemas. Her latest publications include a book chapter on resurgence in Indigenous women’s cinema (Winton and Claxton, 2023) on the works of filmmaker Caroline Monnet (Panorama Cinéma, 2023) as well as in Indigenous women’s testimonies (Ravary-Pilon et Contogouris, Vigilantes, 2022) on the rock group U2 (Mackenzie and Iversen, 2021) and on the exploration of Indigenous lands (Cahill and Caminati, 2020) as well as an article on Caroline Monnet’s experimental work (Panorama Cinéma, 2023) an article on the written word in contemporary Québec films (Área Abierta, 2019) and an article on Québécois cinema and Américanité (American Review of Canadian Studies, 2019).
Scott MacKenzie is Professor and Head, Department of Film and Media, Queen’s University. His books include: Cinema and Nation (w/Mette Hjort, Routledge, 2000); Purity and Provocation: Dogma 95 (w/Mette Hjort, BFI, 2003); Screening Québec (Manchester University Press, 2004); The Perils of Pedagogy: The Works of John Greyson (w/Brenda Longfellow and Thomas Waugh, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013); Film Manifestos and Global Cinema Cultures (University of California Press, 2014); Films on Ice: Cinemas of the Arctic (w/Anna Stenport, Edinburgh University Press, 2015); Arctic Environmental Modernities (w/Anna Stenport and Lill-Ann Körber, Palgrave, 2017); Arctic Cinemas and the Documentary Ethos (w/Anna Stenport and Lilya Kaganovsky, Indiana University Press, 2019); Process Cinema: Handmade Film in the Digital Age (w/Janine Marchessault, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019); Mapping the Rockumentary: Images of Sound and Fury (w/Gunnar Iversen, Edinburgh University Press, 2021) and New Arctic Cinemas: Media Sovereignty and the Climate Crisis (w/Anna Stenport, forthcoming, University of California Press, 2023).