Doors open at 6.30pm. Please join us for festive refreshments before the film begins.

With a short introduction by our director, Tina Fiske.

As we bring our 2025 programme to a close, we invite you to join us for a special Christmas screening. We are delighted to present four documentary films from the 1970s by Abenaki Canadian-American filmmaker, artist, and activist Alanis Obomsawin, who, at 92, remains one of the most influential figures in Canadian documentary film and Indigenous advocacy.

Obomsawin came to filmmaking through music, storytelling, and activism. She began performing as a singer and songwriter in the 1960s, motivated in part by her own painful childhood experiences in school and a desire to connect Indigenous children with their culture and heritage. She was hired by the National Film Board of Canada as a consultant in 1967, and by 1971 she was directing her first film, Christmas at Moose Factory. She became a permanent member of staff at the NFB in 1977, and in the decades since has made more than 64 films that elevate the voices and experiences of Indigenous peoples — including landmark works such as Incident at Restigouche (1984), Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), and We Can’t Make the Same Mistake Twice (2016).

“Documentary film is the one place that our people can speak for themselves,” Obomsawin has said. “I feel that the documentaries I’ve been working on have been very valuable for our people to look at ourselves… and through that be able to make changes that really count for the future of our children to come.”

The four early films presented here, made between 1971 and 1977, mark the foundations of her long career. In these works, she documents the everyday lives, traditions, and cultural practices of a number of First Nations communities with deep attentiveness and care.