Wilfred Buck is a hybrid feature documentary that looks to the night sky and one man’s life to tell a story that spans generations. Our guide is the wise and irreverent 65-year-old Wilfred Buck, who’s been called the Indiana Jones of Indigenous star knowledge. “Using archival footage, stylized re-enactments, poetic imagery and vérité, director Lisa Jackson brilliantly jumps between genres to craft a constellation of Buck’s key life moments and memories, charting his journey to a knowledge system that survived colonization by going underground, now revived by Buck’s endless curiosity and marvel of the Ininew night sky” (Hot Docs). In festivals now.
I Pity the Country (co-directed with Connor McNally) is a powerful music video made to accompany artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s cover of the Willie Dunn song of the same title. This breathtaking short film “simultaneously honours the legacy of Willie Dunn and the Indian Film Crew’s use of archival images, while also masterfully pushing the conversation around Indigenous issues in this country many steps forward” (CBC).
Lisa Jackson Pays Tribute to the NFB and Its Archives
“I have loved the NFB archive since my time in film school in the early 2000s. Simon Fraser University professor Colin Browne showed us many NFB documentaries—on film!—back when NFB titles were available to screen in their original format. His night classes on Canadian cinema and documentary cinema were so exciting that I started to invite friends along. As word of the films got out, interest grew, and for one class I snuck in five or six imposters—several of whom were government economists wearing suits!—which blew our cover.
“During these classes, my eyes were opened to the incredible wealth of NFB films, especially from the golden era of the 1960s and ’70s, which gave us films like Willie Dunn’s The Ballad of Crowfoot (itself made from archives), Very Nice, Very Nice and You Are on Indian Land, as well as Volcano and Memorandum. In these, the moving image was used poetically, sometimes rhythmically, evoking emotions and ideas that crackled and resonated long after the film ended.
“It was a feast of beautiful and bracing imagery and unfettered styles of filmmaking that broadened my perspective on how the moving image could be shaped. I had come to film school in my mid-20s after deciding against a career in Aboriginal law, and as an Anishinaabe daughter of a residential school survivor, the archive allowed me to time travel. I felt a power and a nuance beyond what I’d read in history books.
“Since becoming a filmmaker, I’ve used archives often, but the opportunity to dive deeply into the NFB’s vaults came recently when working on the short music film I Pity the Country and my feature Wilfred Buck. The impact and beauty of these images never ceases to move me, and the expertise of those who know the archive deeply has been crucial to finding what’s needed. We would be lost in a sea of search terms without the encyclopedic knowledge and generous guidance of dedicated archivists.
“We live in a time of instant gratification and short memories, and I believe the archive reminds us of a longer view, and used well it can foster thoughtfulness and compassion. There is power in who shapes the stories of our past, and it plays a large role in how we chart our future. Consulting with the Indigenous Advisory Committee and making archives available at a reduced cost to Indigenous filmmakers is a beginning to righting the wrongs of a past where outsiders told damaging or misleading stories. The NFB archive is a national treasure we must continue to protect and make available to the public in a responsible, well-supported way. It is part of our inheritance and belongs to every one of us.” – Lisa Jackson