20th Edition of FIFEQ Decolonizes Ethnographic Films

Festival International Du Film Ethnographic Du Quebec is a film festival built on community, started by students from Quebec universities, and it’s still going strong in its 20th year run solely by volunteers and free to the public.

What are ethnographic films?

“Ethnographic is, essentially the methodology that anthropology as a discipline uses. And essentially, anthropology has been a discipline that is concerned itself with the study of difference since its inception. And so, the term ethnographic has its roots also in colonial history,” says volunteer Mira Bossakova.

To help break that colonial history is Metis filmmaker and curator, Jack Belhumeur. Jack has curated two special blocks of Indigenous films for the festival, one featuring Wapokini filmmakers at McCord Stewart Museum on May 9th and the other on May 10th exploring Metis identity with films by Metis filmmakers.

Jack isn’t stopping at bringing Metis films to a broader audience, he wants to bring language along with it. Naming the Metis block of films at FIFEQ Kishkishin, which is Michif for Remember. A fitting title since this year’s theme at FIFEQ is memory.

“We're opening up huge conversation that I think needs to be heard, especially right now, because the world is so divided, even within our own community. I've noticed like a lot of divisiveness. And I think we need to do away with that. And one way to do that is to share stories and relate to each other and create these parallels," explains Belhumeur.

FIFEQ is a free festival that runs from May 6 to 11 in Montreal.