Stop-motion nightmare: Terril Calder’s Canned Meat

In the 10 years since its inception, the imagineNATIVE film festival has gone from being an unique showcase for an under-represented group of filmmakers — and and a catch-all glimpse into the cultural landscape of indigenous peoples the world over — to the world’s biggest native-film festival. It’s no surprise, then, the experiences on screen are as disparate as ever for the annual festival’s 10th anniversary, which features movies from more than 10 countries and includes Australia’s first indigenous comedy.

Stone Bros. (***; Oct. 17, 7pm), from director Richard Frankland, follows two Aborigine cousins as they smoke their way across Australia and deal with race issues, their own incompetence, and 187 joints along the way. What’s purported to be the Aussie answer to Cheech and Chong may be lacking in the former’s surreal zaniness — well, except for the Italian noise rocker, the mid-op transvestite and dynamite-happy wedding guest — but is rescued by decent sight gags and a recurring joke about being, “not black, just dark green.”

Less hilarious is Jackpot (***, Oct. 15, 7pm), director Alan Black’s thoroughly depressing Hot Docs co-presentation that looks at the regulars who frequent St. Clair’s Delta Bingo and is set to a gorgeous soundtrack by the FemBots. The lowest common denominator for gambling attracts some interesting characters, a whole lot of impossible dreams and the tragic presumption that playing bingo is somehow an act of controlling your destiny.

The tragic notes continue with Terril Calder’s final instalment of her “Canned Meat” series, Canned Meat — The Whole Damn Can (****, Oct. 18, 5pm, as part of the “Pencil Shavings” shorts program), a freaky, mixed-media stop-motion nightmare featuring creepy puppets, loads of jarring jump-cuts and a spoken word narration. Canned Meat evokes both empathy and terror. Other “Pencil Shavings” standouts include: The Visit, a Sharpie-rendered animation that brings a UFO sighting to maximum weirdness; Cleansing of the People, a trippy stop-motion “smudge ceremony” that plays out like a beautiful dance of otherwise inanimate objects and which is rivalled only by the elegant ceremonial short Dancers of the Grass.

On the documentary front, festival opener Reel Injun (**, Oct. 14, 7pm) sounds like a fascinating exploration of Hollywood’s legendary misrepresentation of Native Americans. Yet, as EYE WEEKLY’s Adam Nayman pointed out when the movie screened at TIFF last month, “the talking heads — including that noted aboriginal expert Clint Eastwood — have precious few original insights between them.” Similarly, at this year’s Hot Docs, EYE WEEKLY film editor Kieran Grant dubbed Professor Norman Cornett: “Since When Do We Divorce the Right Answer From an Honest Answer?” (**, Oct. 15, 9pm) an “unsatisfying and styleless doc” about an unconventional McGill professor who gets unfairly fired.

Much better is the short doc Love on the Street (***, plays with Jackpot), which marries beautifully shot urban landscape sequences with unguarded interview subjects discussing homelessness and love. And rounding out the fest’s sexual representation is BoY (***, Oct 17, 9pm), a Philippine feature about a young poet falling in love with the first boy he buys. Issues of shame and misunderstanding are slightly mishandled — no thanks to shaky camera work and awkward pacing. Ultimately, BoY provides an intriguing glimpse into sexual marginalization in another culture.

The highlight of the “A Decade in Retrospect” program is Zacharias Kunuk’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (HHHH, Oct. 16, 3pm), the Cannes Caméra d’Or-winning film about the Atanarjuat legend, which EYE WEEKLY’s Jason Anderson called “a terrifying and exhilarating sight.”

The fest is set to close on a high note with Barking Water (****, Oct. 18, 7pm), Sterlin Harjo’s strange and wondrous road movie about a dying man (Richard Ray Whitman) driving back to the reservation with his estranged wife and making last visits with those he’d wronged in the past. It’s perfectly realized, spare, genuine and heartbreaking.