Indigenous Presence and the White Mediator in First Nations Cinema
For many decades, First Nations Peoples have been subjects of choice for filmmakers who presented themselves as mediators of a culture that has been portrayed through an external point of view. However, indigenous peoples have recently taken the means to assume responsibility for their representation, creating films that show the rebirth of their culture, through a revitalization of ancestral knowledge and through the creation of a new audiovisual community coming together around the film process. This article attempts to demonstrate how, within films like Before Tomorrow (2008) and Atanarjuat (2001) the white mediator becomes himself an « absent third party », his presence being tacitly suggested within the diegesis, as well as through the appropriation of a foreign medium. It is also shown how indigenous movies and their participants present themselves as transmitters of memory, through the relation that is built between film and spectators during screenings that occur in their communities.