Few non-medical healing therapies are as effective as art.
From poetry to dance to cinema and pretty much every medium in between, art regularly wields its awesome power to heal the darkness in those who make or consume it.
Sure, it sounds like Grade A nonsense, but the proof is in the feels: art gives us a safe space in which to confront our demons and move on from the bad stuff.
In the case of Vancouver filmmaker Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, her work of art literally healed her family.
The art in question is Rebel, Tailfeathers’ short-form documentary melding live action re-enactments with photographs and animation.
Rebel recounts the rocky romance between her mother, who is of Blackfoot descent, and her father, who is Sámi (the alternate title of the film is Bihttos, which is Sámi for “rebel”; the film is in English and Sámi with English subtitles).
The Sámi are an indigenous Finno-Ugric people inhabiting the Arctic area of Sápmi. Like Canada’s First Nations peoples, the Sámi suffered the horrors of a state-run residential school system – and Tailfeathers’ film addresses the deeply personal legacy of this history.
“I knew right away that this was the story I had to tell, and I obviously didn’t want to do it without my family’s blessing,” says Tailfeathers, who was encouraged to make the film after attending a workshop organized by Toronto’s imagiNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival.
“I reached out to my parents, and said, ‘Listen, this is what I’ve been challenged with, and this is the story I want to tell, but I want to tell this story with total and complete love and respect for my family.’ Obviously the last thing I wanted to do was cause any more damage or hurt.”
Her family cheered her on. “My father said he was fine with me doing it, as long as he didn’t have to participate,” Tailfeathers laughs.
Over the course of a year, Tailfeathers dove deep into her family’s history. She explored her parents’ love affair (they met as part of the global movement for indigenous peoples rights), her childhood, and the disintegration of her parents’ relationship.
“It was a full year of constant anxiety,” she says. “It was terrifying. I just wanted to make sure I told this story in the best way possible.”
This was new territory for Tailfeathers, whose previous work (like 2011’s Bloodland, about the impact of hydraulic fracturing on the planet) was more political than personal.
Tailfeathers showed her family the various versions of the script as she progressed through the production process.
And they were the first to screen the final cut of the film before it premiered at imagineNATIVE. The unofficial world premieres took place in two locations: in her mother’s living room on the Blood reserve in Southern Alberta, and (thanks to a handy video link) in her dad’s home in Norway.
Tailfeathers was present for the Blood reserve screening – sort of. “I was such a nervous wreck that I couldn’t even sit in the same room as my family as they watched it,” recalls Tailfeathers. She cuddled her six-month-old niece in another room while her mother and relatives screened the documentary.
“I could hear laughter and silence, and laughter and silence, and then I came back into the room and most of my family was crying,” says Tailfeathers. “My mom and my brother were at a loss for words. They were touched – in a good way – by the film.”
And this is where the healing comes in. Tailfeathers’ parents weren’t on speaking terms before Rebel, but “now, they’ve reconciled, and my father’s been over to visit a couple of times since the film was made,” she says. “They’re friends again.”
Last month,Rebel took home a Matrix Award for excellence in short-form filmmaking at the 2016 Vancouver International Women in Film Festival.
Tailfeathers’ main takeaway from the entire process? “Love is very complicated,” says Tailfeathers, who is currently developing a feature-length documentary about the spate of fentanyl-related deaths afflicting her mother’s nation. “Sometimes it’s not enough, and sometimes it’s all you have.”
Next up for Rebel is a Vancouver screening as part of the Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth.
The film festival is one of the few in Vancouver featuring all-ages programming, with a big chunk of the schedule geared towards equipping kids with the tools they need to start making their own films.
Highlights include a youth filmmakers showcase; a family-friendly day of DIY animation and all-you-can-eat pancakes; Vancouver’s only film industry job fair for high school students; and screenings of youth-oriented shorts and feature-length films from all over the world, including Birds of Passage from Belgium (about two girls who set out to return a marooned duckling to its natural habitat), and the international co-production April and the Extraordinary World, a sci-fi adventure set in 1941 from the producing team behind Persepolis.
Reel 2 Real International Film Festival for Youth runs April 8-15 at various venues, including VIFF’s Vancity Theatre, Rio Theatre, and the Roundhouse Community Centre. Schedule and tickets at R2RFestival.org.
