Northern_Clips' Circumpolar Blog: Shane Belcourt: First-ever aboriginal artist-in-residence at the Winnipeg Film Group

Sunday, 17 January 2010

Shane Belcourt: First-ever aboriginal artist-in-residence at the Winnipeg Film Group

RT @Northern_Clips: Aboriginal filmmaker delves into outsider sense of urban life http://ow.ly/Xilh "Tkaronto" by Toronto Métis Shane Belcourt.

Film website TKARONTO and trailer

Download the Score:
As part of the on-going efforts to share the life of the film Tkaronto, the producers decided to offer the entire original score from the film as a free download.

"... Belcourt, 37, is in Winnipeg for two weeks as the first-ever aboriginal artist-in-residence at the Winnipeg Film Group. He's giving a cinematography workshop, advising filmmakers and working with aboriginal youth.

[...]

Belcourt is the son of a nationally prominent Métis leader and activist, Tony Belcourt, and a white mother. The filmmaker and his siblings were raised in Ottawa. All have taken artistic paths.

"What Louis Riel said is so great: 'Our people will sleep for 100 years, and through the artists they will rise.' I really believe more things are happening through art than politics, in any community. More is being said in art. Political things just seem so compromised."

One of Belcourt's heroes is Woody Allen. He planned to call his first feature Toronto, partly as a nod to Allen's Manhattan. Then he discovered the city's original Mohawk name, Tkaronto. The title suggests that the city can be a contemporary aboriginal place. ..."