Louise Big Eagle. Photo courtesy National Film Board.
The National Film Board of Canada’s North West Studio has announced the three final participants in Doc Lab Saskatchewan, which is a new NFB project for emerging documentary filmmakers.
One of the three finalists is an Aboriginal woman originally from the Ocean Man First Nation. Louise Big Eagle now lives in Regina and is a recent graduate of the University of Regina with a bachelor’s degree in film studies.
Her submission to the National Film Board included two works. I Am a Boy is about a young boy who attended the Regina Indian Industrial School, while Sounds of the Sundance is a composed sound work dedicated to those who attended residential school. She said she wanted to do documentaries and tell people’s stories for a few years.
“I was always interested in film and storytelling and thought this was a new way to stories instead of books,” she said.
Big Eagle says she got involved in filmmaking through the Regina Indian Industrial School project. She says some of the ladies invited her to be the social media manager for that work, and they asked her if she wanted to make her own documentary. She said she decided to take it on, and the idea of film studies came from that work.
Her project for Doc Lab Saskatchewan will be a film about the revitalization of the Assiniboine/Nakota language of her community. She said there are not as many people who speak it and hopes that the language doesn’t die.
“There are people now that want to bring it back, and I thought this is a great opportunity to tell that story on film,” she said.
Big Eagle says she is somewhat jealous of other First Nations groups who have been able to preserve their language, such as the Cree people she met while working in Saskatoon a few years ago.
“They were fluent to each other, and I was so amazed and here I am from the south and I don’t even know my own language,” she added.
She said First Nations should embrace their own languages and wishes that was a first language other than English.
Shooting for her upcoming film will begin in September in Regina and on the Ocean Man First Nation.