Incident at Restigouche + Rise: Standing Rock Part 1&2

This screening took place on Monday, February 5, 2018 at 3:00 pmYukon Arts Centre

Incident at Restigoche (DIR. Alanis Obomsawin, 1984, Quebec, 45 MIN) Alanis Obomsawin’s landmark documentary, Incident at Resitgouche, is as important and influential a film as you’ll find in Canada. In June 1981, three hundred members of the Quebec Provincial Police staged raids on the Listuguj Mi’gmaq reservation to enforce new provincial restrictions on salmon fishing. Arriving shortly after the second raid, Abenaki filmmaker Alanis Obomsawin chronicled the aftermath of the government’s intervention and its effects on the community. In one of the most famous incidents in NFB history, Obomsawin then defied the Board’s directive that she “not interview the whites” and confronted the man behind the raids, Minister of Fisheries Lucien Lessard, in a charged interview whose riveting drama points the way towards the more aggressive and political turn in Obomsawin’s filmmaking. A film that has influenced a generation of filmmakers and activists, Incident at Restigouche was a direct act of resistance against state aggression and false representations.  ~Jesse Wente, ALFF guest curator  Rise: Standing Rock Part I and II (DIR. Michelle Latimer, 2017, Ontario, 88 MIN) Michelle Latimer’s multi-part series Rise, plays as a contemporary extension of the activist cinema born from Obomsawin and Incident At Restigouche. Shot over six months of filming, Latimer and host Sarain Carson-Fox capture the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the territory of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North and South Dakota. Part 1 focuses on the protests themselves and the water protectors on the ground facing off against violent police and private security forces. A diary of ongoing resistance against the same colonial forces that are present in Obomsawin’s film from more than 30 years earlier, a testament to the ongoing incursions into Indigenous life. Part 2 turns the lens towards the larger indigenous protest movement and activist community, looking at the history of the resistance and its contemporary manifestations and intersections with social media. Like Obomsawin, Latimer focuses on the voice of the community itself, urging the audience to listen to voices that have historically been silenced. It’s hard to imagine a series like Rise without first a film like Incident At Restigouche, and together they represent a continuum of Indigenous cinema and resistance. ~Jesse Wente  Guest curator, Jesse Wente in conversation with Rise series director, Michelle Latimer to follow screening.