Tuesday, February 9, 2021

Available Light Film Festival 2021

https://myscena.org/la-scena-musicale-team/
josephine-bacon-a-linguistic-legacy/
Rebecca bought tickets for the online “Available Light Film Festival” (February 5 to 27th) from the Yukon since she read the promise that you can “enjoy 70 films, live virtual events, concerts, artist talks, Q&As, and more.” She bought two tickets. This means we can watch the films once on her ticket and once on mine. We are having a hard time getting through all of the films just once.

We are on the viewing of our second film now. The first one we did two days ago was titled Call Me Human featuring Josephine Baçon, an Innu poet who lives in Montreal.  If  you are are interested in a one minute taste of the tone of this film click on this trailer.

One of the most amazing scenes to me is where she returns to the places she first slept in Montreal, one of them being the bathroom of a gas station where she kept warm overnight. The original gas station is gone, replace by a more modern one. She stands in the middle of a new gas station between two gas pumps and says, “One night we slept in a garage that was right on this spot. We (she and her sister) slept in the bathroom because we were looking for warmth. We had just come to Montreal and we had no place to stay.”

There was such gratitude in her voice for the warmth they found that night.

Some of Josephine Baçon’s poetry accompanied the film. I am sure that when I come across one of her books, I will pick it up and read it.

Rebecca is teaching about the Inuit film and law this semester. I am looking for films and books that I can learn from -- anything legal or social that I can find that is outside of the articles I am reading for the course. And I acknowledge there are more books sitting on the professor’s desk than I am ever going to get through. I am part way through four of those right now.

The second film was called Shiva Baby and Rebecca and I watched the trailer which said it is a comedy. We sat down last night at the big TV, Rebecca with her popcorn, me with a Coke and we viewed the film. I'm usually quiet during a film but I could hear myself saying to her after each segment, “Oh no, what is going to happen next.” The film is about a college-age student who goes to the event at the home of the deceased after a funeral where there is food and an opportunity to give condolences. There she meets her middle-aged lover and her former lesbian companion. Things can only go from bad to worse. Yes, someone's comedy but not the comedy of that girl that day.

If you are interested how Rebecca and I attend our festival, the films have to be downloaded (her job) and then they can be watched for a 72-hour period. The next two films that I have to watch have darker themes: political activists in Nigeria who runs into violence, and the second is about the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. I need to view these during the afternoon when I have more energy.

Arta

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