Wilfred Buck Documentary Film Event

Wed. Jan. 22 05:00 PM - Wed. Jan. 22 07:00 PM
Contact: e.mcdonough@uwinnipeg.ca
Location: Room 2L17, University of Winnipeg

The event is a screening of a new documentary film about a prominent elder Indigenous Manitoban astronomer, Wilfred Buck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfred_Buck .  The documentary has appeared in numerous film festivals and won several awards (such as best Canadian documentary at the Calgary Int. Film Festival — source https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31597907/?ref_=tt_mv_desc).

From the National Firm Board of Canada: Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, a charismatic and irreverent Cree Elder who overcame a harrowing yet familiar history of displacement, racism and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.

Buck is humble, profound, funny, always real and a master storyteller. Narration taken from his autobiography condenses the loss and pain of his youth into powerful, Beat-like poetry. After his community in Northern Manitoba is forcibly relocated to make way for a hydroelectric dam, Buck’s family loses everything. He descends into the darkness of the city streets, surviving any way he can, until he reconnects with Elders who start him on a path that transforms his world. Driven by insatiable curiosity and instructed by dreams, Buck becomes a science educator and internationally respected star lore expert. His mission is sharing these life-changing teachings—as relevant and urgent today as ever—always guided by ceremony and anchored in the land.

Directed by Lisa Jackson. Access provided by the Canadian Astronomical Society.