A Mi'kmaq man reflects on witnessing the destruction of his homelands. | dG1fMk1STlhEdmJBNzQ
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:03 Hi, everyone.
00:05 My name is Jared Lank.
00:06 I'm a Mi'kmaq filmmaker from Southern Maine.
00:09 And I'm the director of Bay of Herons, a film playing this
00:11 year in the US Shorts program at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival.
00:17 Bay of Herons is very much a visual essay
00:20 that I made about my own reflection
00:22 and this contemplation I always have in the presence of nature.
00:26 The film originally started about the abandoned school
00:28 at the center of the island.
00:29 But I quickly found myself leaning more
00:32 into creating a film about my own experience going
00:35 to the island in this kind of recursive approach
00:38 to capturing the life there and how it made me feel,
00:41 not only as an indigenous person living
00:43 in their traditional homelands, but as a human being
00:46 experiencing the complex emotions of cultural loss
00:50 and cultural resiliency.
00:52 A huge component of the story I'm telling in Bay of Herons
00:55 is the inclusion of a 20th century Wabanaki
00:57 story about our cultural hero, Glouskap,
00:59 and his approach to the French to try to understand them.
01:03 This story was being told after hundreds
01:06 of years of interactions with the West at this point.
01:08 And it really reflects our cultures and our people
01:11 trying to understand what is happening
01:13 to them in this process.
01:15 Growing up in my family and seeing
01:17 the effects of this on my family has had a profound impact on me
01:21 and how I choose to live my life today.
01:23 I really tried to focus on the duality
01:27 in the landscape of Macworth Island,
01:29 this Western establishment in this abandoned building
01:31 in school in the middle of the island,
01:34 contrasted with the natural world that
01:35 has re-encroached upon it, in a way,
01:38 almost forcing out or rejecting the idea
01:40 of Western establishment on its foundation.
01:44 Anyway, that's it about Bay of Herons and my process
01:46 in making the film and some of the reasoning
01:48 for the creative choices I made.
01:49 Hope you get a chance to check out the film at Sundance
01:51 this year.
01:52 And I hope you have a great day.
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