Speaker Series | Alanis Obomsawin and Jason Ryle: In Conversation

Admission
Tickets are available for purchase in advance online at a cost of:

• $10 for Gallery Members
• $15 plus general admission to the Gallery ($29) for the general public*

*Please note that Non-Members of the Vancouver Art Gallery are required to purchase a General Admission to the Gallery to attend this event.

If cost is a barrier for you, please contact Capture Photography Festival at [email protected]

In person at the Vancouver Art Gallery
Registration required
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Please note the event time is in Pacific Standard Time

Join Abenaki filmmaker and activist Alanis Obomsawin and film producer and curator Jason Ryle for a special in-person conversation about her career, which spans across education, music, documentary cinema and activism, and has mobilized Indigenous voices and ideas to transform society.

For more than five decades, Obomsawin has created a model of Indigenous cinema that privileges the voices of the people whose stories she tells, and challenges the core assumptions of a world shaped by colonialism. Co-presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery and Capture Photography Festival as part of the 2023 Capture Speaker Series.

The talk will coincide with the opening of The Children Have to Hear Another Story: Alanis Obomsawin. Visitors can come early and see the exhibition before the talk begins or explore after it concludes.

Co-curated by Richard Hill and Hila Peleg

The Children Have to Hear Another Story: Alanis Obomsawin is made possible by a partnership between Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin; Art Museum at the University of Toronto; and Vancouver Art Gallery, in collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada, and through the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts; and CBC/Radio-Canada.

About the Speakers

A member of the Abenaki Nation and one of Canada’s most respected artists, Alanis Obomsawin is an activist filmmaker and producer at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), where she has worked since 1967. She was born in 1932 in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and spent her early years in Quebec, on the Odanak reserve, whose songs and stories she continues to tell. Her filmmaking practice is deeply committed to the social justice of her people and explores issues of human significance to all. She is also a lifelong vegetarian.

Obomsawin began her artistic life as a singer, writer and storyteller in 1960. Her performances, which include stories and songs in Abenaki, English and French, have been presented in universities, residential schools, prisons, museums, art centres and folk festivals across North America and Europe to aid humanitarian causes. In 1988, she released her singular musical album Bush Lady, featuring traditional Abenaki songs as well as original compositions, all told with feminist fervour. The album was remastered and rereleased by Constellation Records thirty years later.

Jason Ryle is a producer and curator currently based in Toronto. He is Anishinaabe and a member of Lake St. Martin First Nation, Manitoba. Jason was the Executive Director of imagineNATIVE from July 2010 to June 2020. In this capacity, Jason oversaw all operational and artistic activities of the annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. As an independent producer, his current projects include the TV series AMPLIFY (for APTN), the documentary feature SINGING BACK THE BUFFALO (directed by Tasha Hubbard), and the VR series SUNALIMAT (NFB & Parks Canada). Jason is also the International Programmer, Indigenous Cinema for TIFF.

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  The Children Have to Hear Another Story: Alanis Obomsawin

  Apr 7 – Aug 7, 2023