Film of the Week

Curated by Third Cinema Days

Indigenous Cinemas in Conversation opens with a dialogue between two short films that interrogate the politics of representation and the possibilities of reclaiming the archive. Asinnajaq's Three Thousand reworks archival images through animation to reconsider the cinematic history of Inuit representation, while Theo Panagopoulos's The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing unearthes colonial footage from British Mandate Palestine to interrogate its colonial gaze, asking how Indigenous filmmakers can confront, reinterpret, and reclaim images produced and withheld by colonial apparatus.

Three Thousand (2017)

Experimental, 14m

In this short film, Inuk artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—14 minutes of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the present, past and future of her people in a radiant new light.

Diving into the vast archive of the National Film Board of Canada, she parses the complicated cinematic representation of the Inuit, harvesting fleeting truths and fortuitous accidents from a range of sources—newsreels, propaganda, ethnographic docs, and work by Indigenous filmmakers. Embedding historic footage into original animation, she conjures up a vision of hope and beautiful possibility.

Director and Writer: Asinnajaq
Animators: Jonathan Ng, Patrick Defasten
Editor: Annie Jean
Original Music: Olivier Alary

The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing (2024)

Experimental, 17m

When a Palestinian filmmaker based in Scotland unearths a rarely-seen Scottish film archive of Palestinian wild flowers, he decides to reclaim the footage. This tender essay film questions the role of image-making as a tool of both testimony and violence when connected to entanglements between people and land.

Director & Editor: Theo Panagopoulos
Producer: Marissa Keating
Sound Designer: Hannan Jones
Music Composer: Alexandra Ketrinopoulou