On July 1, 2017, it will be "Canada Day", the celebration aimed at extolling the dubious virtues of 150 years of Colonial Rule and the exploitation of Native Canadians.
TODAY, however, is the REAL Canada Day. It's called NATIONAL ABORIGINAL DAY, and in honour of those who shared their land with us, I'm featuring links to several movies I've written about at The Film Corner that feature issues/themes pertaining to our true forefathers/foremothers.
Links to 10 Reviews by ME (Greg Klymkiw) and 1 Review by my (then) 12-year-old-daughter (Julia Klymkiw), all in ALPHABETICAL ORDER.
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| Let us all enjoy racist White Trash getting decimated. |
Avenged (2013)
***½
This all-new entry in the cinematic lexicon known amongst genre geeks as "Redsploitation" (a relatively tiny sub-genre of contemporary B-pictures) is a kick-ass thriller that focuses on a lithe, babe-o-licious, long-blonde-tressed beauty possessed by the spirit of a legendary Aboriginal leader to exact revenge upon the scum who gang-raped her and also happen to be the racist spawn of White Trash who committed acts of genocide upon American Natives. Read the full review
HERE.
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| SickBoy seeks freedom from the reservation. |
Drunktown's Finest (2014)
***
This is a film about a place many of us will never know, but as the sun rises over a dusty highway and the evocative strains of "Beggar to a King" by the legendary 60s Native American band Wingate Valley Boys, we're drawn into an alternately haunting and vibrant portrait of a Navajo reservation where life ekes itself out with the dull drip of molasses - a place of aimlessness, alcoholism, repression, violence and for some, hope that a future imbued with promise will be a dream come true. Read the full review
HERE.
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| Mothers and Daughters |
Empire of Dirt (2013)
*****
A review of this mother-daughter story written by my (then) 12-year-old daughter Julia Klymkiw. In my daughter's words: "Everything in it seems true. I see a lot of movies, but this one made me feel like I was watching things, people and places I knew. Mostly though, I think it's a great movie because it shows how having people around you that love you is the best. See this movie. Especially if you are a girl or a woman. There are not a lot of movies about girls that are this realistic." Read the full review
HERE.
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| The legacy of colonization in FIRE SONG. |
Fire Song (2015)
***½
Set against the backdrop of the legacy of British colonial rule in Canada, this is a deeply moving and indelibly-captured slice-of-life portrait of young and old alike - all of whom seek a better life; if not
on their reservation, then
off it. Read the full review
HERE.
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| Colonial Scumbags must be taken down - NOW!!! |
Fractured Land (2015)
***
A young, handsome, rugged, Mohawk-pated Aboriginal man of the Dene Nation in northeastern British Columbia with a penchant for hunting, trapping and expert tomahawk-throwing is also an impeccably groomed "monkey-suited" lawyer entering his articling year with a desire to focus on Native land rights and environmental issues. Colonial Ass will be kicked!!! Read the full review
HERE.
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| Self-determination on the islands of the Haida People. |
Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World (2015)
*****
Charles Wilkinson's truly great film cannily places the anger of the Haida Nation over Canada's flagrant violation of Aboriginal Rights within the context of a people who are not only trying to live as traditionally as possible, but in many cases are working towards a reclamation of traditional cultural values which were under Colonial attack for so long. Read the full review
HERE.
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| Benjamin Bratt RULES!!! |
The Lesser Blessed (2012)
***
Anyone who has experienced life in Canada's most barren regions will be startled by the sense of place in this movie. There isn't a single image - interior or exterior - that isn't infused with the strange, remote and terrible beauty of life in this part of the world. Read the full review
HERE.
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| Lives of the Oglala Lakota Nation. |
Pine Ridge (2013)
*****
This is a film that conjures all the magic of cinema to give us several lives that could have been so much better lived and yet others, that seem very well lived indeed, but both exist in the shadow of shameful actions and events that continue to darken the doors of the colonizers and the colonized. We're reminded that answers have never come easily, nor, alas will they ever. Read the full review
HERE.
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| Duane Jones in THE SUN AT MIDNIGHT |
The Sun at Midnight (2016)
***½
This sensitive, poignant, beautifully acted portrait of a young woman trying to find herself with the help of a wise, old caribou hunter who takes her under his wing, is one lollapalooza of a survival story set in Canada's sub-Arctic. Read the full review
HERE.
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This piece of shit sexually abused over 500 Native children.
He's walking free!!! Keep both eyes open!!! |
Survivors Rowe (2015)
*****
The legacy of a piece of shit who sexually abused over 500 little Aboriginal boys detailed in this powerful documentary. If an Anglican priest and Boy Scout leader viciously sexually assaulted over 500
white children, would he still be living freely in society with the legal implication that he'll never serve more incarceration for his crimes, no matter how many continue to surface? Read the full review
HERE.
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| Heil Harper! Heil Colonialism! Heil Canada! |
Trick or Treaty? (2014)
*****
Alanis Obmosawin's documentary focuses upon a massive peaceful protest in Ottawa, the nation's capital, that was designed to force Chancellor Stephen Harper (and, of course, the Governor General who represents the British Monarchy) to meet face-to-face with those First Nations Chiefs most affected by the over-100-year-old treaty which was designed and implemented to steal land and not allow any meaningful sharing in the decision-making process of dealing with said land. Read the full review
HERE.
