GoMA have teamed up with Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) to show a double bill of work by acclaimed Abenaki filmmaker and storyteller Alanis Obomsawin and Anishinaabe film maker Darlene Naponse. Tickets available through the GFT Website

Selected by artist Clara Ursitti through recommendations from Elder Mary Laronde and Robin Potts (Bear Island, Teme-Augama Anishnabai) as part of her GoMA exhibition Amik, the screening celebrates different generations of women filmmakers making political work about the colonial erasure of Indigenous communities and the extraction from and damage to land that continues to be protested today.

The documentary short Canoe (1972) by Alanis Obomsawin is from her series Manawan that explores the history of the Atikamekw community of Manawan, Quebec. Less than a century old in name, Manawan embodies the experiences of so many Indigenous communities across Canada. Where once they practised their customs freely on a vast territory, the arrival of the Europeans would eventually mean the restriction of their cultural practices and confinement to a reserve named Manawan. In Canoe utilising engineering ingenuity that is centuries old, Atikamekw elders Agatha and Cézar Néwashish build a small-scale version of

The more recent feature film by Darlene Naponse Falls Around Her (2018) follows Mary Birchbark (centring the considerable talents of actor Tantoo Cardinal). Mary is a famous musician who decides to stop touring and return to her grandmother’s home on a First Nations reserve.

Mary’s personal reconnection to the land and her community is central to this poetic and poignant film, as is the beauty and histories of the land itself. Production of Falls Around Her took place on the sacred land of Atikameksheng Anishnawbek, a First Nation in Northern Ontario, Canada, and home to writer and director Darlene Naponse and her ancestors. Its people are descendants of the Ojibway, Algonquin, and Odawa Nations.