Montreal International Documentary Festival

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RIDM 15 - 26 Nov. 2023

Sky Hopinka: Redefining Potential Territories

A member of the Ho-Chunk Nation and a descendant of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Sky Hopinka has been developing a multidisciplinary artistic practice for the past decade. As a musician, poet, filmmaker, and visual artist, he explores these art forms’ many possibilities through a personal approach. The cinematic works featured in this retrospective carry significant poetic and political weight. They offer rich reflections on language – the embodiment of culture and the means through which it is transmitted – as well as on the land and its colonial dispossession.

As an experimental filmmaker, Sky Hopinka explores both analogue and digital media, and often works with archival footage. His bold aesthetics and narrative choices navigate a tension between reality and abstraction, and skillfully invoke a sense of memory that’s both personal and shared. His use of music, a recurring element in his films, also manages to express a sentiment or statement that might otherwise remain buried in the space between images and words. His works’ poetic titles cleverly steer our reading of them, either underscoring the themes being addressed or conveying their underlying tone and atmosphere.

This retrospective is co-presented by VISIONS, a monthly screening series of art films and moving images.

For all the details regarding the installation, click here.

 

 

Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
With an inspired artistic vision, this feature film spoken mainly in Chinuk Wawa follows the thoughts and wanderings of Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier.

MAɬNI – TOWARDS THE OCEAN, TOWARDS THE SHORE

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2020
  • United States
  • s.t. English
  • 80 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
In a consciously fragmentary film, Cleo Keahna and Terry Running Wild share their perspectives on the resistance movement at Standing Rock.

DISLOCATION BLUES

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2017
  • United States
  • 17 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
Through this experimental short film and densely wrought sensory experience, we are exposed to a myth imagined for Xawiska, a plant used by the Ho-Chunk to recover from a fainting spell.

FAINTING SPELLS

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2018
  • United States
  • 11 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
A meditation on death and reincarnation, this visually and sonically rich film stands as a compelling tribute to Indigenous poet Diane Burns.

I'LL REMEMBER YOU AS YOU WERE NOT AS WHAT YOU'LL BECOME

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2016
  • United States
  • 13 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
On the winding road of a father-son relationship, this personal short weaves a timeless dialogue between the two, narrowing the distance separating them.

JÁAJI APPROX.

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2015
  • United States
  • 8 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
Perspectives, images, music, poetry, and personal stories are layered and intertwined in a complex reflection on traditions and possible futures.

JUST A SOUL RESPONDING

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2023
  • United States
  • 17 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
In this touching intergenerational story, the filmmaker’s great-grandmother giving a language lesson to his grandmother in 1972 is a starting point that sparks reflection around knowledge transmission.

KICKING THE CLOUDS

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2021
  • United States
  • 16 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
Inspired by Hollis Frampton’s experimental work Nostalgia, this film plays with notions of sharing traditions and knowledge, while an overhead projector displays fragmented landscapes.

LORE

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2019
  • United States
  • 11 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
Using archival footage of the Indigenous-led occupation of Alcatraz, Sunflower Siege Engine reminds us that the battle for sovereignty is ongoing.

SUNFLOWER SIEGE ENGINE

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2022
  • United States
  • 13 min
Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories
The tension of colonial America is conveyed through the juxtaposition of moving images, a reflection on identity and belonging, and a poem by Walt Whitman.

WHEN YOU'RE LOST IN THE RAIN

  • Sky Hopinka
  • 2018
  • United States
  • 6 min
November 22nd to 25th, 2023 Sky Hopinka: Redefining potential territories

Sky Hopinka Installation : The Island Weights

This two-channel film by artist Sky Hopinka is based on the tale of the four water spirits known as Island Weights. In the creation story of Ho-Chunk,...

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