The ninth annual ImagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival showcases a broad spectrum of work — from serious documentaries about struggles with no obvious solution, to playful animated shorts — that celebrates the diverse spirit of aboriginal cultures around the globe. This year’s program centres on female perspectives yet, understandably, a number of films deal with the ongoing issue of land rights, a central concern for aboriginal people from the arctic circle to the southern hemisphere.

Zacharias Kunuk’s short Exile (***; Oct. 17, 5pm) tells the heartbreaking story of 19 Inuit families forcibly relocated from northern Quebec to the brutally inhospitable high arctic. Kunuk’s desire to tell the story almost entirely through the voices of those who were there is admirable, but the talking-head narrative feels static and the doc lacks the visual lyricism that makes his feature films Atanarjuat and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen so breathtaking.
Mixing remarkable archival film footage with recent video, Pirinop, Meu Primerio Contato (Pirinop, My First Contact; ****; Oct. 18, 11am) reveals the generation gap between Ikpeng elders who remember their first contact with European culture in 1964 and the young adults who have never seen the lost land their people seek to reclaim. In Audrey Huntley’s A Warrior Woman’s Journey (***; screening along with Little Caughnawaga, Oct. 16, 3pm), Caledonia, Ontario, activist Doreen Silversmith travels to Mexico to witness the similar land-rights struggles of an indigenous community in Oaxaca. While the film’s throughline could be stronger, Silversmith’s charisma and commitment shine through.

The role of aboriginals as caretakers of the environment is explored in the shorts Indigenous Plant Diva (***) and One River, All Rivers ****, both screening in the “Seeds of Change” shorts program (Oct. 17, 3pm). In Kamala Todd’s Diva, Cease Wyss — also known as T’Uy’Tanat, or “she who travels by canoe to gather plants to heal all peoples” — explains how she uses herbal medicine in urban Vancouver, and while there seems to be an untold story suggested but not expressed in this portrait, the subject’s deep respect for the plant world is inspiring. In Tom E. Lewis’ beautifully-shot One River, an Australian aboriginal elder addresses to the white world as the camera pans across the land he’s trying to protect from the mining industry.

The reclamation of sacred land is also the subject of premiere Deb-we-win Ge-kend-am-aan (Our Place in the Circle; ****; with When Colin Met Joyce, Oct 19, 1pm), Lorne Olson’s celebration of his two-spirited, or mixed-gender-role, community. The moving documentary follows Olson’s circle of friends and colleagues as they work to recreate Olson’s vision of two-spirited dancers at peace in their traditional cultural roles. It also includes glimpses into the subjects’ individual paths to survival and self-acceptance while never losing its optimistic and open-hearted tone.

There are also lighter pieces, such as Doug Smarch’s stop-motion animation short The Drum Practice (****), a charming fantasia about the secret lives of inanimate objects reminiscent of the work of surrealist Czech animator Jan Svankmajer, but with a decidedly aboriginal twist. It shows on Oct. 17 at 9pm with The Last Explorer by Neil Diamond — the Cree filmmaker not the Jewish Elvis.