World Premiere
In this personal documentary, Indigenous comedian Chad Charlie goes to participate in the Standing Rock occupation and has a transformative experience. The film takes us on Charlie’s powerful passage of self-discovery, from the irreverent jokester to the culturally aware poet whose powerful spoken word piece encapsulates his realizations at the close of the film. In this blend of cinema, vlog, and social media with tons of humour, Charlie uses a real mix of formats (phone streaming, news footage, fly-on-the-wall documentary style) very effectively, and doesn’t try to work in a huge narrative or have a tidy conclusion. Like many who were there and endured violence by police against their peaceful marches, Charlie is still working through trauma and mental health issues he experienced from it. In his case, this journey has left him with a greater awareness of the ongoing injustices that Indigenous people must still contend with.
Community Partner
USA
2022
English
Featured in:
International Shorts: Personal Journeys
The films in this shorts program are all about discovery. Beautiful and thought-provoking voyages of internal and external discovery that honour relations and history, while encountering stimuli that promote a new understanding of self.
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The Nutcracker at Wethersfield
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Pictures of Ghosts
A companion piece to Mendonça Filho's The Secret Agent, Pictures of Ghosts is a lovely, relaxed, ruminative riff on movies, memory, the imaginative space conferred by that place we call Cinema, seasoned with love and boundless anecdotes.
North of Ourselves
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The Secret Agent
Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.
Cutting Through Rocks
Winner of Sundance's World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize, Cutting Through Rocks follows Sara Shahverdi — motorcyclist, midwife, and first-ever councilwoman elected in her Iranian village. A vérité triumph by Sara Khaki & Mohammadreza Eyni.
Credits
Producer
Ben-Alex Dupris
Cinematography
Alex Goetz
Editor
Ben-Alex Dupris
Original Music
Terrance Sabbas
Director
Chad Charlie
Chad Charlie is an Afro-Indigenous filmmaker from Ahousaht First Nation. Beginning his career in 2008 as a stand-up comedian and spoken word artist, he now extends the same passion for poetry and humour in his writing for TV and film. He is currently a writer and actor for the hit television series Reservation Dogs (FX).