Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance – TIFF

A milestone of Canadian cinema, Alanis Obomsawin’s controversial, award-winning documentary captures the 1990 Oka standoff between Mohawk activists and the Canadian army from behind the Mohawk lines.

In July of 1990, a dispute over a proposed golf course that was to be built on Mohawk land in Oka, Quebec led to an armed standoff between Quebec police, Mohawk protestors and the Canadian army. For seventy-eight days, Alanis Obomsawin filmed the standoff from behind the Mohawk lines, and emerged with a raw, angry and vital chronicle of one of the most shameful episodes in the modern history of the Canadian government’s relationship with First Peoples. The first documentary to win the Best Canadian Feature award at the Toronto International Film Festival — where it had its North American premiere after initially being rejected for airing on CBC Television — Kanehsatake went on to win more than a dozen international awards, and stands as a watershed film in the history of First Peoples cinema.

Read More: http://tiff.net/summer2015-special-events/kanehsatake-270-years-of-resistance-introduced-by-jesse-wente/kanehsatake-270-years-of-resistance