The history of Indigenous people in cinema is misrepresentation, says Jesse Wente

This week, the RIDM documentary film festival apologized for screening a film at last year's festival.  
 
Of the North is a 74-minute film mash-up of snow, snowmobiles, hunting and family life. But there are also clips of Inuit appearing drunk, crashing an ATV, vomiting, and one very sexually explicit scene.

The film's director,  Dominic Gagnon admitted that he has never been to the North. But used clips from publicly-available videos posted online and edited them together. 

The controversial film came under heavy criticism from Inuit artists and groups who called it an offensive view of Inuit.

In a statement issued by festival leadership, RIDM apologized for screening Of the North, and for its initial reaction to that criticism. 

Unreserved's culture columnist Jesse Wente said preventing these types of issues starts with the curatorial process. 

"The film is one thing, it's programming the film at a festival that is actually one of the key decisions. There are hundreds of movies made in Canada a year. Most of them don't see film festival plays, most of them aren't released into the theatres."

Wente said these decisions rest with curators, who have to understand each film's context and origin. And it's up to them to position the works in that larger context. 

"That's ultimately, really, what RIDM was apologizing for, was not so much the existence of the movie because that wasn't up to them. It's the fact that they played it without taking into account both the context within the movie and the context of the movie in the larger world and the larger issue of Indigenous representation in the media."

That said, Wente acknowledged that problematic films made by high-profile artists are often given a pass and screened at festivals. 

"Here, [with] Of the North, we're dealing with not an established artist in Dominic Gagnon and we're dealing with an experimental-style film. And yet Adam Sandler can release a wholly racist movie onto Netflix, deeply problematic films win Oscars, still. If this film was made by a more established artist, would the festival have apologized, would we actually be in this debate?"

Click the Listen button above to hear Jesse's full conversation with Rosanna Deerchild.