Post by blackcrowheart on Jun 4, 2006 17:03:04 GMT -5
FILM
FILM CAPTURES THE HEAT WAVE OF AN INDIAN SUMMER IN OKA
OLYN NIKODYM / carolyn@vueweekly.com
It’s always with some trepidation that a reporter tackles an important and complex story. Being entrusted with someone else’s narrative, with all of the inherent nuances, can be a serious burden, and there is always a certain amount of self-doubt over whether the story has been related respectfully.
Local filmmaker Gil Cardinal, whose film Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis opens the 11th annual Dreamspeakers Film Festival (Jun 7 - 10), understands that feeling well. After he’d been approached by the CBC and a colleague to make a mini-series about the 1990 Oka Crisis—a Mohawk land claim that saw the aboriginals try to stop the expansion of a golf course and luxury condo complex over an ancestral cemetery and sacred pine grove—the film crew went through a serious consultation process with the Mohawk of Kanasatake and Kahnawake Reserves, even going so far as giving concerned citizens scripts to go over and offer comments on.
“[The Mohawk] were, in the beginning, quite mistrustful when they heard that this was going to be done. They thought, ‘Is this going to be Hollywood coming in to whitewash everything?’”
Cardinal explains over the phone. “So we had meetings with the grand chief, we had open public meetings and sought community support, and took very seriously their feedback. In the end, we were supported and encouraged by that section of the community who cared enough to get involved, and they, in fact, wanted us to do as much filming as we could in the community.”
Indian Summer draws on the literature about the Oka Crisis to deliver an intimate look at both the Mohawk occupation and the inner workings of the Quebec government and their response.
Beginning with the July 11, 1990 raid on the Mohawk by the Surité de Quebec (SQ—Quebec’s provincial police), the film strives to unravel the timeline and history behind the dispute.
Weaving his script with actual footage of the standoff, Cardinal offers a compelling view of an embarrassing chapter in Canada’s recent history, made all the more pressing in light of the current land dispute in Caledonia, Ontario. It is the use of the archival footage that breathes life into the complicated story, offering an all-too realistic glimpse of the racial and political climate.
Clashes between Oka residents and Mohawk escalated, while fascist radio announcers pushed both for the government to get physical with the Mohawk and for Oka residents to take over where their leaders had “failed.”
According to Cardinal, who returned to Kanasatake last weekend for a screening at the reserve on May 26, the problems between the communities continues. (In fact, Jean Ouellette, the mayor of Oka at the time and the man responsible for pushing for the golf course expansion, was re-elected as mayor by a landslide less than a year after the crisis.)
Where the film struggles is in the sheer complexity of the situation. The dispute lasted over six months and resulted in three deaths and the arrest of over 150 Mohawk, as well as tension between negotiators and Mohawk, between warriors and non-warriors, making for relationships that regularly ran hot and cold. In its desire to capture as many sides as possible, Indian Summer loses something in all of the details.
However, it’s difficult to criticize a film about a story of this importance for giving too many facts. Like any movie of this kind, Indian Summer serves as a sturdy jumping off point, a place to discover the other material that discusses Oka. What rings true throughout the film is the earnestness with which Cardinal and his crew approached their subject, allowing the narrative of the standoff speak for itself.
“The feeling among [the producers] was that this had been a very significant event in our country’s recent history, but there was really very little known about it,” Cardinal says.
“It was such a complex situation, but all people really remembered about it were the TV images that became quite famous, like the soldier and the warrior facing off.” V
Wed, Jun 7 (6 pm)
Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis
Written & directed by Gil Cardinal
Starring Alex Rice, Gary Farmer,
Tantoo Cardinal
Metro Cinema, $20
FILM CAPTURES THE HEAT WAVE OF AN INDIAN SUMMER IN OKA
OLYN NIKODYM / carolyn@vueweekly.com
It’s always with some trepidation that a reporter tackles an important and complex story. Being entrusted with someone else’s narrative, with all of the inherent nuances, can be a serious burden, and there is always a certain amount of self-doubt over whether the story has been related respectfully.
Local filmmaker Gil Cardinal, whose film Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis opens the 11th annual Dreamspeakers Film Festival (Jun 7 - 10), understands that feeling well. After he’d been approached by the CBC and a colleague to make a mini-series about the 1990 Oka Crisis—a Mohawk land claim that saw the aboriginals try to stop the expansion of a golf course and luxury condo complex over an ancestral cemetery and sacred pine grove—the film crew went through a serious consultation process with the Mohawk of Kanasatake and Kahnawake Reserves, even going so far as giving concerned citizens scripts to go over and offer comments on.
“[The Mohawk] were, in the beginning, quite mistrustful when they heard that this was going to be done. They thought, ‘Is this going to be Hollywood coming in to whitewash everything?’”
Cardinal explains over the phone. “So we had meetings with the grand chief, we had open public meetings and sought community support, and took very seriously their feedback. In the end, we were supported and encouraged by that section of the community who cared enough to get involved, and they, in fact, wanted us to do as much filming as we could in the community.”
Indian Summer draws on the literature about the Oka Crisis to deliver an intimate look at both the Mohawk occupation and the inner workings of the Quebec government and their response.
Beginning with the July 11, 1990 raid on the Mohawk by the Surité de Quebec (SQ—Quebec’s provincial police), the film strives to unravel the timeline and history behind the dispute.
Weaving his script with actual footage of the standoff, Cardinal offers a compelling view of an embarrassing chapter in Canada’s recent history, made all the more pressing in light of the current land dispute in Caledonia, Ontario. It is the use of the archival footage that breathes life into the complicated story, offering an all-too realistic glimpse of the racial and political climate.
Clashes between Oka residents and Mohawk escalated, while fascist radio announcers pushed both for the government to get physical with the Mohawk and for Oka residents to take over where their leaders had “failed.”
According to Cardinal, who returned to Kanasatake last weekend for a screening at the reserve on May 26, the problems between the communities continues. (In fact, Jean Ouellette, the mayor of Oka at the time and the man responsible for pushing for the golf course expansion, was re-elected as mayor by a landslide less than a year after the crisis.)
Where the film struggles is in the sheer complexity of the situation. The dispute lasted over six months and resulted in three deaths and the arrest of over 150 Mohawk, as well as tension between negotiators and Mohawk, between warriors and non-warriors, making for relationships that regularly ran hot and cold. In its desire to capture as many sides as possible, Indian Summer loses something in all of the details.
However, it’s difficult to criticize a film about a story of this importance for giving too many facts. Like any movie of this kind, Indian Summer serves as a sturdy jumping off point, a place to discover the other material that discusses Oka. What rings true throughout the film is the earnestness with which Cardinal and his crew approached their subject, allowing the narrative of the standoff speak for itself.
“The feeling among [the producers] was that this had been a very significant event in our country’s recent history, but there was really very little known about it,” Cardinal says.
“It was such a complex situation, but all people really remembered about it were the TV images that became quite famous, like the soldier and the warrior facing off.” V
Wed, Jun 7 (6 pm)
Indian Summer: The Oka Crisis
Written & directed by Gil Cardinal
Starring Alex Rice, Gary Farmer,
Tantoo Cardinal
Metro Cinema, $20