Opening Night Screening

Wednesday 7pm | OCT. 14 Reel Injun Opening Night Screening, Bloor Cinema

Reel Injun

Presented by

Tungijuq Directors: Félix Lajeunesse, Paul Raphaël An Igloolik Isuma Production Executive Producer: Zacharias Kunuk Canada · 7 min · 2009 · 35mm

Internationally renowned throat singer Tanya Taqaq and filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk star in this mesmerizing film celebrating the Inuit hunting tradition. A beautifully cinematic and deeply haunting expression of a woman’s transformative journey through a barren Arctic landscape.

Zacharias Kunuk is one of Canada’s most acclaimed directors. He won the Camera d’Or at Cannes 2001 for Isuma’s first feature, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner. He is president and co-founder in 1990 of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first Inuit-owned independent production company. Kunuk is the winner of the National Arts Award, National Aboriginal Achievement Award and in 2005 was awarded the Order of Canada.

Reel Injun Director: Neil Diamond Co-directors: Catherine Bainbridge, Jeremiah Hayes A Rezolution Pictures Production Canada · 85 min · 2009 · Digital Beta

A powerful homage to North American Native people throughout a century of cinema, Reel Injun is a retelling of the history of the Hollywood Indian. Embarking on a personal quest to deconstruct the image of the stoic Indian that dotted television screens all over the world, Cree director Neil Diamond compares his own NorthernCanadian upbringing to the vastly different portrayals he grew up knowing and loving in the movies. With humour and insight, Diamond ventures into the heart of America’s southwest to uncover how Hollywood transformed the way the world viewed Native people. What emerges is a visual feast that includes clips from hundreds of Hollywood classics and candid interviews with cinema celebrities Robbie Robertson, Clint Eastwood, Graham Greene, Sacheen Littlefeather, John Trudell, and Jim Jarmusch. In charting the evolution of Native cinema from the silent era until today, Reel Injun honours and celebrates the future of authentic Indigenous cinema. A tribute to all people who believe that nations can come together to have their voices heard.

Neil Diamond hails from the Cree community of Waskaganish, on the coast of James Bay. His recent credits include The Last Explorer (2009), which premiered at imagineNATIVE 2008, One More River (2004), and Heavy Metal: A Mining Disaster in Northern Quebec (2004). The latter won the Audience Pick prize at Norway’s Riddu Riddu Festival. His 2001 directorial debut, Cree Spoken Here, garnered the Telefilm/APTN award for Best Aboriginal Documentary. In 1993 Diamond cofounded The Nation, the first news magazine to serve the Cree of Northern Quebec and Ontario. Neil is a creative member of Rezolution Pictures in Montreal.