HIFF41

THOUGHTS / NIGHT RAIDERS: A Companion essay by scholar Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada //   There is a beautiful dream at the heart of the ramshackle brutal future Danis Goulet (Cree and Métis) conjures in NIGHT RAIDERS—that we don’t have to live like that. Our future can be one of pilina and possibility. In the film,

THOUGHTS / KARMALINK: A Companion essay by scholar Ida Yoshinaga // Who remembers spiritual cinema, the early-2000s trend, which promoted feature films with messages of uplift and inspiration? Few of these spiritual-cinema entries addressed macro-societal aspects of living in the 21st century, such as globalization and unequal impacts of the digital era. These overlooked issues

THOUGHTS / THE ISLAND IN ME: A Companion essay by scholar Caryn Lesuma //   Filmmaker Gemma Cubero del Barrio’s The Island in Me follows Florence “Johnny” Frisbie and Amelia Borofsky as they make a homecoming journey to Pukapuka, a Cook Islands atoll, where both women spent their formative years. The film frames Frisbie and

THOUGHTS / HIGH TIDE, DON’T HIDE: A Companion essay by scholar Jaimey Hamilton Faris //   The youth are our future ancestors. The Youth Climate Strike generation, who organized the largest-yet direct action for the climate in 2019, are especially important elders-in-the-making as they mobilize for their future families and generations to come. Emboldened and

THOUGHTS / CROSSINGS: A Companion essay by scholar Vernadette Gonzalez //   In 2015, an assembly of women who wanted to take a walk, raised a stir on the Korean peninsula. Their intention was simple, gather, talk, and sew—to create community through the simplest of acts, and to make imaginable a vision of peace on