Films that reflect the ways in which love transcends the physical body to manifest itself anew, changing us forever. It lives on through our memories, keeps watch, keeps us company, and waits to return to us again one day.

Healing through laughter is often a way our communities use play to engage with serious issues. These filmmakers will make you look at things with a smirk, a chuckle, or even a downright knee slap, rejoicing in the resilience of our people.

Woven together by language, whispers, hair, and sacrifice, KIN TIES explores our relationships to the ancestors and to the land.

Strengthening our family makes our culture strong. These films celebrate birth, children, mothers, fathers, and our Elders to show us we are all journeying together and that no one is left behind because our voices matter and because family matters.

Strengthening our family makes our culture strong. These films celebrate birth, children, mothers, fathers, and our Elders to show us we are all journeying together and that no one is left behind because our voices matter and because family matters.

Paige Bethmann’s debut Remaining Native is a vital, unflinching documentary that follows runner Kutoven Stevens, who goes by Ku, on his journey from small-town Nevada to an out-of-state university. Through a masterful use of voiceover and interview, Bethmann explores the meaning behind Ku’s choice to honour his ancestors’ survival of boarding school through his dedication to running and the path that it sets him on. It’s not a film that offers easy answers, but rather a deeply human portrait of Indigenous individuals navigating the complexities of their heritage in a world that often seeks to erase them. It’s a powerful testament to the enduring strength of community and the ongoing fight to preserve cultural identity and to find healing. Most recently awarded SXSW’s Audience Award and Special Jury Award for Best Documentary, Remaining Native is a necessary film and offers a crucial perspective on the lived realities of Indigenous people today.

Ryland Walker Knight’s Mann’s Sparks is a hypnotic essay film that stitches together footage from Michael Mann’s iconic filmography with Beach House’s 2015 album Depression Cherry into an editorial masterstroke. As much as the film stands as a testament to Knight’s craft as editor, it also acts as a thematic dialogue between the dream pop band’s music and the images by one of cinema’s greatest auteurs, spanning Mann’s work from Thief (1981) to Blackhat (2015). It’s a mesmeric work, both visually and sonically, acting also as a document of Knight’s own development as an editor after suffering an injury and using Mann’s footage and the band’s album to relearn how to edit. Mann’s Sparks is a spellbinding celebration of cinematic language and how it can be reused, relearned, and reimagined into new possibilities.

In March 2008, imagineNATIVE formed the Embargo Collective, an international group of seven Indigenous artists who collaborated and challenged one another to create seven new films. Each of the artists has an impressive body of work, demonstrating exceptional talent and vision with a different focus in media arts — documentary, fictional narrative, and experimental work — and each representing diversity of Indigenous Nations. These artists were chosen for their enthusiasm for collaboration and their willingness to be open to a challenge. Inspired by filmmaker Lars Von Trier's documentary The Five Obstructions, imagineNATIVE encouraged the members of the Embargo Collective to push their creative boundaries by asking them to construct a set of limitations for one another. While the initial goal was to demonstrate how essential the collaborative process is to film, a far more profound and intimate result materialized over 20 months: As the filmmakers shared their experiences, inspired one another, and created work together, a collective spirit was born. What you are about to see are the fruits of the collaboration, a true testament to what film can be when artists come together to create. Most of the descriptions for this program are republished from the 2009 imagineNATIVE Catalogue.

Fox Maxy’s Guts & Glitz is a vibrant, experimental exploration of trauma and healing, a film that defies easy categorization. It's a deeply personal work, yet one that resonates with universal themes of resilience and connection. Guts & Glitz, grappling with the aftermath of abuse, navigates a world where the lines between the physical and spiritual blur. The film's visual poetry is striking, weaving together intimate portraits of human relationships with the raw beauty of the natural world, all drawn from over a decade of Maxy’s personal archive. The film pulsates with a raw energy, capturing the messy, often contradictory nature of the human experience. It’s a bold, uncompromising debut, marking Maxy as a vital new voice in Indigenous Cinema.