[Short film] #Enchukunoto (The Return)

Laissa Malih with John Ole Tingoi (#Maasai)

"As the first female Maasai filmmaker, Laissa Malih initially set out to document the land-based practices of her forefathers and ways in which climate change is reshaping Maasai communities. In returning to the IL-Laikipiak Maasai village that her parents left when she was a child, Malih experiences an epiphany: her own life is a reflection of the myriad challenges between Maasai youth and elders, women and men, ancestral ways of passing down essential knowledge and modern methods of education.

"In ENCHUKUNOTO (The Return), Malih’s singular perspective also challenges ways in which the Maasai peoples have long been seen and documented by tourists and other outsiders. 'Many tourists come to our Maa lands to film the lions, the gazelles,' she observes. 'The camera takes and takes. I wonder what my camera can give my people in return?'

"Interweaving verite with Malih’s insights, Malih offers a heretofore unseen perspective as an insider and an outsider, a woman among men, a filmmaker carrying on sacred Maasai traditions of storytelling in an era defined by uncertainty."

https://www.reciprocity.org/films/enchukunoto

#IndigenousAfricans #MassaiPeople #WomenDirectedFilms #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity #FilmVerite

[Short film] #Tahnaanooku'

Justin Deegan (Arikara, Oglala, and Hunkpapa) with Jennifer Martel (Cheyenne)

"A grandmother. A source of existence. A portal to other worlds. For thousands of years, the Indigenous Peoples of what is now known as North and South Dakota co-existed reciprocally with the Missouri River, its waters offering life while also inspiring legends and languages. In Tahnaanooku’, filmmaker Justin Deegan takes an experimental approach to the severing of this relationship between his community — the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara — and the river, the result of over 80 years of US government efforts to control the Missouri, including via the Garrison Dam.

"Seen through the eyes of Deegan’s mother, Darline, Tahnaanooku’ intertwines past, present, and future, land and language, dreams and reality. The staunching of the Missouri contrasts with a fluid streak of horses, the diminished river currents interweave with the light of the aurora borealis. In dreams, Darline — a designer, activist, mother, and grandmother — receives messages from the original Mother, Earth itself. Meanwhile, the stark visual backdrop of the Garrison Dam offers an immovable reminder of the ruinous history of the Pick-Sloan Plan, deemed by legendary historian Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) to be 'the single most destructive act ever perpetrated on any tribe by the United States.'

"Glimpsed in ceremony, Darline (one of the last speakers of the critically endangered ancient Arikara language) offers care to a fellow grandmother and shares hope for the generations to come."

Watch: https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tahnaanooku

#Arikara #StandingRockSioux #Mandan #Hidatsa #Arikara #MotherEarth #MissouriRiver #GarrisonDam #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity

[Short film] #Tayal #Forest Club

"Ancestors! We’ve gotten stuck here. Can you help us find the way home?” pleads Yukan, an Atayal teenager lost in the forests of his forefathers.

"Bullied at school and weighed down at home by his dad’s drinking, Yukan is eager to escape it all. When his best friend, Watan, invites him on a hike, a physically and emotionally bruised Yukan grabs his machete and the two boys head into the woods. But this isn’t just any hike, or just any woods — as Yukan and Watan’s youthful overconfidence runs them up against the realities of nightfall in the dense and mountainous Atayal homelands, other forces begin to reveal themselves. Before they can find a way home, these two young Tayal men must first humble themselves enough to learn the lessons that the land itself has to offer.

"In TAYAL FOREST CLUB, Taiwan’s first Indigenous female film director, Laha Mebow, shares a coming-of-age tale that interweaves Tayal characters, settings, and symbols with the complexities arising from her community’s interactions with contemporary society."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tayal-forest-club

#Atayal #IndigenousTaiwanese #Taiwan #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers #WomenDirectedFilms
#IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #Reciprocity

[Short film] #Tentsítewahkwe

Katsitsionni Fox (#Mohawk) with Xochitl Fox (#Mexica / #Azteca)

"As a young girl, Jessica Shenandoah (Wolf Clan from the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation) learned about harvesting medicine and food plants alongside her mother and grandmother. Contemporary Native People are often separated many generations from their traditional knowledge due to the effects of colonial realities such as boarding school, forced religion, and land theft.

"In the latest Native women-centered film by Mohawk filmmaker Katsitsionni Fox (Ohero:kon - Under the Husk, Without a Whisper - Konnon:kwe), Shenandoah goes on a journey across four seasons and multiple Native territories to connect with other knowledge keepers reviving the land-based knowledge of their ancestral grandmothers in order to return to time-honored practices of pottery making, mat weaving, hide tanning, medicine making, food gathering, and more. Jessica embodies the Mohawk concept of Tentsítewahkwe as she picks up knowledge of the old ways, these slow methods of creating and connecting in reciprocity with the Earth.

"This film is at once a thank you to the Native women who imbued their descendents with blood memory of these practices and a promise to future generations of Native people that these practices will stay alive for generations to come."

Watch:
https://www.reciprocity.org/films/tentsitewahkwe

#DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers
#IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #IndigenousReclamation #Reciprocity #MotherEarth #Akwesasne #MohawkNation #TraditionalMedicine #LandBasedKnowledge #WomenCenteredFilms

[Short film] Ma ŋaye ka Masaala a se ka Wɔmɛti
(From God To Man)

Lansana Mansaray with Ibrahim Sorious Samura, and Samuel Kargbo (#Limba)

"On the day that Lansana Mansaray was born, a tree was planted in his name in his father’s Limba village. Now an Emmy and Peabody nominated filmmaker, Mansaray returns to the same village to better understand the essential relationship that Limbas share with the trees that define every aspect of community life.

"As the smooth highways of Freetown give way to vermillion dirt roads, the car becomes just one means of transport; there’s the scent of chuk chuk plums, a memory of the Matorma sound (a singular rhythm associated with sacred Limba rituals), as well as jokes and poignant moments of connection arising from Mansaray’s diligent efforts to speak Limba. For a 'city Limba man' like Mansaray, returning to his deceased father’s homeland becomes a journey of Indigenous reclamation.

Amidst celebratory, humorous, and quotidian moments of village life, Mansaray interweaves reflections from a community that has endured more than its share of hardship — colonization, a civil war, and growing threats to the forests that the Limbas treasure. As with pouring out a little palm wine for the ancestors, Ma ŋaye ka Masaala a se ka Wɔmɛti is an offering to those who came before and to those who are still here. But as Mansaray playfully lets the viewer know, some things should not be shared with the rest of the world."

https://www.reciprocity.org/films/ma-%C5%8Baye-ka-masaala-a-se-ka-w%C9%94m%C9%9Bti

#SierraLeone #IndigenousPeoples #Africa #IndigenousPeoplesOfAfrica #DCEFF #IndigenousStorytellers
#IndigenousFilms #LandDefenders #ReciprocityProject #Reciprocity #IndigenousFilmMakers
#IndigenousWisdom #IndigenousKnowledge #IndigenousReclamation #Colonization #Colonialism