We’re delighted to be included in the lineup of this vibrant new multi-theatre, digital storytelling and live presentation forum that includes performances and panels for all people to celebrate and enjoy Indigenous culture.

Two Indians Talking screens on Sunday November 13th, at 7:00 pm in the W2 Media Cafe as part of the closing ceremonies. Tickets are $10. Further information is available at vimaf.com.  Festival passes and Gala tickets are available in advance through eventbrite.

Building on the tradition of sharing knowledge and telling stories, the Biindigaate Film Festival is a celebration of indigenous films and filmmakers.

‘Two Indians Talking’ screens at 9:00 pm, Sunday September 25, 2011 at the Paramount Theatre, 24 Court St S, Thunder Bay, ON.

The full program of inspiring short and feature-length films, and ticket information, can be found online at www.biindigaate.ca.

I spoke, via Skype, with Canadian film-maker Sara McIntyre about her debut as a feature film director of “Two Indians Talking.” The 30th Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival showed it twice.

As I wrote in my review, “‘Two Indians Talking’ gives us two young Native men, cousins, on their way to a meeting where they expect to have a bunch of Cree Indians join them, a dozen or maybe dozens.  But their partners don’t show.  So rather than watching a cadre of zealous activists prepare an ambitious protest – a stand – we watch Two Indians Talking about what this means.”

How hard or awkward was it for you to make a film about Natives when you’re an outsider?

You’re right; that was a particularly sensitive issue.  And I had to sort of get my head straight with the idea of me approaching this particular topic…  And I think the thing that gave me confidence is that I was invited.  The script was sent to me by a writer, who I had not met yet, although I certainly knew his name.  Andrew (Genaille) was a friend of a friend at the time.  And he heard that I was looking for feature scripts, and he started e-mailing me things.  And because he comes from the First Nations culture (the Canadian term for Natives or Indians), all of his stories come from that community.  …And this one just grabbed me; it was unlike anything I had read before; unlike anything I had seen before.  It totally drew me in, the story and the characters just caught my attention right away.

So the goofy thing is, he was sending me scripts, knowing that I was looking for something to direct, but it actually took me a couple of days to get up the courage to ask him if I could please direct this.

But the bigger issue was, my approach as a director was never to impose my idea of what the story is or who it’s about so what I did, and I think it’s the thing that allowed trust and doors to open, is that I went in asking to be shown, and I did this with the actors too.  I sat down with each of them and just had them tell me what their own personal experiences were, and how those related to the story.  And tell me what the script meant; I was never telling them was the story was about.  They were telling me what the story was about.

The cousins, Adam and Nathan, chew on the question of doing the right thing, as activists, quite a bit.

How different is the right thing for each cousin?  Since each of these cousins has a different or disparate idea of what the right thing is, to your mind, how different is that for each cousin?

Well that’s an interesting place to look, isn’t it?

(She takes time to consider.)

WW: Have I thrown you a curve ball?

SM: No, I like that you’re asking good questions; this’s fun!

SM: So the bottom-line is that they both decide to take the same action, so they’re in agreement on what the right thing is, but they come to it from very different places.  So the thing that fascinates me about each of their decisions is…  There’s so much complexity; we can’t just say, “oh Adam is doing it for this reason, and Nathan’s doing it for this reason.”

I think that Nathan shows up ready to go; he’s there.  No questions asked.  He’s gonna go through with it.  But when we look a little deeper, the reasons that he thinks he has are actually a little thin.

Like he’s making grand statements about this band or that band, but it turns out that he’s actually inaccurate about some of those statistics.  So he needs to get a little more solid in his thinking.

Adam’s journey – he’s full of theory, full of rhetoric, full of statistics and he’s really cerebral about the whole thing.  And he really needs to connect to the people, and the community, the reason that we do things like this.  And I think a big part of that journey happens in Nathan’s story about the little boy who doesn’t have underwear: where his mom says, “I can feed him or I can clothe him.

(There’s a scene where the cousins clash over whether someone’s mom abused them, or simply did the best she could with what little she had.  It was an allegory about the practical realities of activism vs. idealism.)

I think that’s where the shift starts for him.  He (Adam) really sees his cousin, who he has hasn’t taken very seriously, and he starts to really get him, that there’s something deeper going on here.

SM:  Now.  So I’m interested in your take on it.  Obviously you’ve done a lot of thinking about this.  What does it mean that Nathan only goes when he knows it’s gonna be successful?

WW: This is a new experience for me.  (Responding to a subject’s question.)

WW: He’s human.  When you think that you’re facing an overwhelming opposition, unless you figure that you have God or the gods on your side, you’re not gonna take it upon yourself to stand at the roadblock.  I’m not gonna fault Nathan for having chosen kind of an easy way out.  Death, or killing someone is a wonderfully easy topic to consider in drama.  But when you’re on the scene and you have to actually consider facing someone down who’s aiming a weapon at you…

SM: That’s a good point; I hadn’t thought about it that way.  And that’s why the film feels real.  A lot of people have said, “this feels personal;” “this feels real.”  And I think that’s because these guys don’t ever trivialize violence.

Ms. McIntyre spoke with Joseph Planta, for a Canadian podcast “On the Line;” they agreed in finding the educated cousin, Adam, obnoxious.

I have to pin you to a wall here, because, in your conversation with Mr. Planta, you both described Adam as obnoxious and full of himself… (I liked him.)

SM: What’s the question; do I still feel that way?

WW: Some part of him chafed against you.

SM: The first time I read it, the first impression I got was “this guy is irritating!”  He’s sort of pent up, and he’s angry.  He’s so tense that his humor is flat and he just sounds sort of abrasive.

…I imagine he’s the kind of guy whose just felt out of place no matter where he is.  Growing up on the reserve, with the community of people largely like Nathan, who had very strong opinions about things.  He probably really felt out of place.  And he was craving more information…

When Sara spoke again with Mr. Planta, she said that Justin Rain, who portrayed Adam, wasn’t her first choice.

How would the film have been different, for good or for ill, if Justin Rain hadn’t been the one to bring Adam to life?

Justin actually was the first person who caught my attention for this role.

So he showed up at a table reading; just a workshop.

(Ah; the truth)

There are so many different layers to it; sometimes I just tell the abbreviated version.

So he showed up at a script workshop that we did months before the audition process.  And he caught my attention, because he just is this character, on so many levels; I mean he really gets it.  And I discovered that he actually knew about the script maybe a year before I did.  So he was very familiar with it.  Then, what happened is, I was offered the opportunity to work with someone who has a lot of experience, and has a fanbase, and also is a very good actor, and was right for the part.  Completely different kind of energy than Justin.

(She refused to name him.)

His energy was a lot more calm and innocent and wide-eyed and he brings a very youthful, thoughtful – not youthful “naive” – but that wisdom that young people have: just straight forward and honest, and open.  And I could see the story going that way, playing against Nathaniel’s grittiness, and that’d be a really fun dynamic to direct.

So I told Justin, “I’ve been offered ‘this name.’”  And it works for the story too.  For me as a first-time director, having two pretty substantial actors in the film.  It felt like that’d be a pretty wise, strategic decision to make.

And Justin just said to me, “Oh, yeah.  You have to do that!

So Justin stepped out of the way.  And I went through my preparation process with this other actor in mind.  And then, honestly, two weeks before we were supposed to go to camera, the other actor had to pull out for a number of reasons.  And I called Justin.  And I honestly think it turned out for the best.”  So it had been Justin’s from the start.  A better known, more bankable actor had interrupted the process.

What’s your next project?

I haven’t yet found a script that lit me up the way this one did.  So I’m trying to meet with a lot of writers and just form relationships with people who’ve got stories.  I worked with writers for a number of years; I co-produced a script-writing workshop, here in Vancouver that was quite rigorous.   And I learned a lot about writing from that; and I learned a lot about writers.  The biggest thing I learned is that I’m not innately a screenwriter, which I think is a good thing to know.  (chuckles)

So I have a couple of stories, that’ve been very well outlined.  But I want to hand them over to screenwriters who can turn them into scripts.  So my focus is to meet writers, who either have work ready to be optioned, that I can get involved with, or who would like to take my stories and turn them into scripts.

But it feels a lot like chance, a lot like dating…

The Leos are “a Celebration of Excellence in Film and Television in British Columbia”. Awards will be handed out at two events in June:

Saturday, June 11 — Gala Awards Ceremony, Fairmont Hotel Vancouver
Wednesday, June 8 — Celebration Awards Ceremony, Club 560

The full nominees release can be found online.

Thanks to Louise McMurray, Festival Director, and the Duncan community for your warm welcome and rich conversation after the Saturday evening screening. Congratulations to our fellow award winners! The full awards recipients are posted online.

At first glance, a movie where a couple of guys talk about politics, identity and oppression doesn’t sound like “good times!”  But hold on or you might miss out on the laughs and wit!  “Two Indians Talking” is just that (but also more).

This story gives us two young Native men on their way to a meeting.  They expect to have a bunch of Cree folks join them, a dozen or maybe dozens.  The greatness is in the extraordinary irony: their partners don’t show, so rather than watching a cadre of zealous activists prepare an ambitious protest – a stand.  They need help to block a major road and make a point.  We are flies on the wall as the guys chew their cud and clash on their divergent ideas of Indianness.

This amusing Canadian drama, from director Sara McIntyre, is one among the dizzying array of titles at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Film Festival, which runs through May 3rd.

This buddy story is splendidly written with subtle humor that helps us to enjoy a show that could have been a drawn-out chat fest.  Another remarkable detail is that, while we hear plenty of First Nation names mentioned, we don’t know which one these men claim.

We know we’re in for something special, or at least well-informed and thoughtful from the start: the college-educated one reminds his cousin, “people don’t rebel because they’re looking for a fight.  They rebel because their tired of suffering!”  The waiting, the discussions, the anxiety about their absent partners brings a sense of Samuel Beckett’s play “Waiting for Godot” to this – either absurdity or tension.

As good as this picture is, and these two men are, they have partners in this.  A few pretty women come into the picture, as well as a funny man of few words.

One slight irritation is that, while the two men are realistic, they are also stock: one, Adam (Justin Rain), is 20 something, has been to college and self-confidently refers to Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Burke, and other historical voices.  He’s clean cut with a wheat complexion.  His counterpart and cousin, Nathan, (Nathanial Arcand) is older, husky, darker and quicker with his anger and indignation over the centuries of whites’ feet on Natives’ necks.  Their conversation shows all of these, even if it’s only implied.

When the chat fest “Before Sunrise” came out 15 years-ago, on “At the Movies” Roger Ebert conceded that these kind of movies can be their own obstacles: they’re rarely done well, so that someone will want to pay attention.  “Two Indians” is another of those exceptions, even though some viewers’ patience while sympathetic, will be tested.

These “Two Indians” reward our patience with a great, witty climax that can’t help but jerk a hearty chuckle or cackle out of us: the last thing we’ve come to expect happens.  It glows with irony.

Two Indians Talking was part of a successful American Indian Heritage Week celebrated over 5 days in Coeur d’Alene Idaho.

American Indian Heritage Week, April 4-8, enriched the North Idaho College campus with traditional dance exhibitions, arts and crafts, games, food, presentations and shows. The American Indian Student Alliance planned the event all year in order to promote awareness and involve people in Native American and Coeur d’Alene traditions. This year, the club used a silent auction, tribal food feast and inter-tribal show to raise money for its Che’nshish scholarship fund and to sponsor its September golf scramble. AISA president Tim Clark said the club raised about $2,000 from American Indian Heritage Week.

read full story from the Sentinel Online

Two Indians Talking is a comedic drama that’s expected to be a hit at the Cowichan International Festival of Film & Art.

But it’s more than that, too.

“What I love about it is it’s a conversation we don’t often get to hear,” explained director Sara McIntyre.

“Especially to someone outside First Nations culture, I often have a sense those conversations are off-limits, so this feels like a peek inside the room where these (conversations) happen.”

Written by Andrew Genaille, an Aboriginal writer from the Hope/Abbotsford area, Two Indians Talking sees two young men waiting to be joined by a neighbouring band for sufficient numbers to stage a roadblock.

“The story takes place within 24 hours, with these two men holed up together in a community centre, and they talk,” said McIntyre.

“They just talk, about everything under the sun: the politics of the roadblock they’re heading into; culture, education, money, women, family, religion, all of it.”

The 96-minute film has already received accolades and awards at other festivals and screenings, thanks to its profound content and many laughs.

“It’s very frank, it’s uncensored, and it’s funny, which makes it palatable,” said McIntyre. “And these guys are easy to spend time with — they’re attractive and intelligent and witty.”

The guys are Adam, played by Justin Rain of Twilight, and Nathan, played by Cree actor Nathaniel Arcand.

“I don’t know if there is a film as unique as Two Indians Talking, and it’s always nice to be a part of something that’s new and innovative,” said Rain. “I can’t speak highly enough about this film.”

Rain, as well as McIntyre, will be on-hand for an audience Q&A after Saturday evening’s screening of the film.

“(The film) is useful in getting people talking; it seems to be the kind of film people want to hang around afterward to talk about, because there are so many ideas that come up,” said McIntyre.

“That’s the best thing you can ask of entertainment — that it keeps you engaged after the 90 minutes are over.”

Two Indians Talking screens Saturday at 7 p.m., along with nine-minute short film Keeping Quiet. Tickets are $10.

There are more than a dozen films included in the seventh-annual film festival.

Festival director Louise McMurray also touted films like culturally significant We Come From One Root, and Canyon War.

River of Renewal offers an environmental theme, and Old Stone Church is a local film starring Cowichan’s Harold Joe.

Film screenings are at the Cowichan Theatre, and tonight’s Coast Salish Dinner & Gala starts at 5:30 p.m. at the Quw’utsun’ Cultural Centre, with guest speaker Tantoo Cardinal.

For more information, go to www.aff.cowichan.net

Your ticket
What: Cowichan Aboriginal Festival of Film & Art
When: April 13 to 17
Where: Wednesday’s gala at Quw’utsun’ Cultural Centre; art and films at Cowichan Theatre.
Tickets: Cowichan Ticket Centre, 250-748-7529

Young filmmakers  also showcased

Youth film screenings happen Saturday, April 16 from noon to 2 p.m. at the Cowichan Theatre, with awards on Friday, April 15 from 9 a.m. until 2 p.m.

Aboriginal actress Tantoo Cardinal will be working with youth during workshops, as will Two Indians Talking and Twilight actor Justin Rain.

“I love talking to youth and sharing my experiences and funny stories with them,” Rain said.

“I’ll be talking to them about where I come from, and the journey that brought me to where I am today.”

Rain was an aspiring architect at BCIT when he started meeting actors.

That’s when he fell in love with their craft.

“Soon enough, architecture went to the backburner, and here I am, five years later,” he said. “I don’t think it happened accidentally — everything happens for a reason, and I’m really happy with the work I’m doing. It allows me to express myself.”

In Two Indians Talking, Adam (Justin Rain) leaves for university because he wants a way out of the reservation. Adam studies English with plans to become a writer. Adam’s cousin, Nathan (Nathaniel Arcand), grew up on the reservation. Nathan is a high school drop-out who wants to become a rock star. Nathan, 10 years older than his cousin, tries to give him some guidance on reservation life. A viewer commented, “I felt the movie was from an educated person’s point of view and not someone who has actually lived and experienced reservation life.”

The movie’s climax occurs when their small reservation community plans to block off a highway to protest land claims. Adam returns to the reservation to write a book about the roadblock, much to Nathan’s disgust. The dramatic comedy touches on the issues of treaties and First Nations communities from two points of view. “Each person had valid arguments. The movie really made me think of about the struggles people go through every day,” a viewer remarked. “As a person who has lived on a reservation most of my life and experienced a roadblock, I feel this movie represented a common clash of education and culture that I saw growing up on reservation,” stated another viewer.

Although the dialogue did not represent the cultural side adequately, some of the comedy in Two Indians Talking is an accurate demonstration of how humour is used in First Nations culture to help deal with serious situations. “As a British man who has never heard anything about First Nations issues, I found this very educational and enlightening. It is well put together and covers a wide spectrum of thought-provoking points. I thoroughly enjoyed it,” one student said.

I enjoyed seeing the subject of land claims brought up for people to watch. I would recommend this movie for those interested in learning about land claims and treaties in Canada.

Written by Eric Anderson (Aboriginal Representative of UFV SUS) and
Desmond Devnich (Rep-at-Large UFV SUS).