YORKTON - The acclaimed debut feature documentary from Anishinaabe filmmaker Lisa Jackson, Wilfred Buck made its international debut at Copenhagen's prestigious CPH:DOX and is an official selection of Hot Docs 2024.
And now it will be the feature presentation opening night at the Yorkton Film Festival Thursday.
“To be the opening night film is just so exciting,” offered Jackson.
Jackson told Yorkton This Week it was gratifying to be the opening feature at a festival such as the one in Yorkton.
“I love Yorkton. I’ve been there twice, or three times before. My film (Suckerfish) won an award there,” she said. “It’s one of the most festivals I’ve been too.”
What makes Yorkton special is “the community atmosphere,” she added.
The film is a co-production between Jackson's Door Number 3 Productions and the National Film Board of Canada, in association with Clique Pictures.
“Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, a charismatic and irreverent Cree Elder who overcame a harrowing yet familiar history of displacement, racism and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony,” detailed the film’s page at mediaspace.nfb.ca
“Buck is humble, profound, funny, always real and a master storyteller. Narration taken from his autobiography condenses the loss and pain of his youth into powerful, Beat-like poetry. After his community in Northern Manitoba is forcibly relocated to make way for a hydroelectric dam, Buck’s family loses everything. He descends into the darkness of the city streets, surviving any way he can, until he reconnects with Elders who start him on a path that transforms his world. Driven by insatiable curiosity and instructed by dreams, Buck becomes a science educator and internationally respected star lore expert. His mission is sharing these life-changing teachings—as relevant and urgent today as ever—always guided by ceremony and anchored in the land.
”Director Lisa Jackson deftly interweaves verité footage of Buck’s present with archival footage and cinematic, dramatized scenes from his past, painting a portrait of a beloved leader who now stands at the forefront of the resurgence of Indigenous ways of knowing.”
Jackson said she recognized there was a film to be made after reading the opening page of a book by Buck.
“It actually started with his memoir. I read the first page and couldn’t believe his writing,” she said.
Buck is an Ininiw (Cree) astronomer, author, educator, addictions consultant, Knowledge Keeper and lecturer originally from Opaskwayak Cree Nation (OCN), notes the NFB page. He graduated from the University of Manitoba with two degrees in Education and has 25 years of experience as an educator, working with students from kindergarten to university. He also worked as a science facilitator for 15 years at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre, where he did extensive research on Ininiw Acakosuk (Cree stars/constellations).
Currently, Wilfred gives planetarium presentations using his mobile planetarium, in addition to lectures and keynote presentations on Indigenous astronomy and Indigenous worldviews. He is considered the foremost authority on Indigenous astronomy in the world.
Wilfred has written three books: Tipiskawi Kisik: Night Sky Star Stories (2018), the semi-autobiographical I Have Lived Four Lives (2021), on which Lisa Jackson’s documentary Wilfred Buck is based, and Kitcikisik (Great Sky): Tellings That Fill the Night Sky (2021).
It’s a big life.
“There’s a lot more of Wildred’s story than I was able to put into this film ... It really captures the man,” said Jackson.
But what she was able to put into the film still has her feeling good about the finished product.
“I feel proud of how his life is represented,” offered Jackson. “ ... I’m really happy with it.”
That said Jackson said the film is not just her creation.
“It takes a village to make a film ... In this case there were a lot of people involved,” she said.
