Entertainment

NFB launches Indigenous Cinema website with more than 200 films to stream

The National Film Board of Canada has launched Indigenous Cinema, a website that offers free streaming of more than 200 titles by Indigenous directors.

Collection includes short and feature-length films produced from 1968 to 2017

The National Film Board of Canada's new Indigenous Cinema website offers free streaming of more than 200 titles by Indigenous directors. (NFB)

The National Film Board of Canada has launched Indigenous Cinema, a website that offers free streaming of more than 200 titles by Indigenous directors.

The website is part of the NFB's three-year Indigenous Action Plan and will also feature playlists and filmmaker biographies.

Films available to stream include Mike Kanentakeron Mitchell's You Are on Indian Land, Alanis Obomsawin's Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance and Gil Cardinal's autobiographical Foster Child.

The new site is based on original artwork by Eruoma Awashish, a graphic artist of Atikamekw and Québécois heritage. (Courtesy Eruoma Awashish/National Film Board)

Spanning both short and feature-length movies produced from 1968 to 2017, the collection includes entries from contemporary artists, writers and filmmakers such as Kent Monkman, Duane Linklater, Katherena Vermette, Drew Hayden Taylor, Michelle Latimer, Tracey Deer and Jeff Barnaby.

Titles from this collection have been featured in the NFB's #Aabiziingwashi (#WideAwake) Indigenous cinema series, which has hosted 700 community screenings across Canada since its launch in April 2017. 

Other commitments in the NFB's Indigenous Action Plan include efforts to achieve workforce equity, cultural-competency training for all staff, and allocating a minimum of 15 per cent of its overall production spending to Indigenous-directed projects.