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What's Been Said

Blood River

Selected Press Quotes:

"In a brilliant inversion of the Hollywood tradition of casting white actors in Native roles, Monkman casts Metis actor Tantoo Cardinal as both Native Mattie and white ClaireÖ..To keep in line with the Hollywood prototype that his inversion is based on, Monkman very deliberately mimics back a slightly daffy (but not entirely unkind) white suburban fantasy-landÖ.Cardinal, who had a dialogue coach to help her get Claire's accent right, creates a character that allows us to focus, with serious playfulness, on the possibilities, politics and limitations of representing the Other in a complex, hybrid situation."
Richard William Hill, FUSE Magazine, Vol. 23, No. 4, 2001

"Ms Cardinal does a wonderfully woody rendition of a wide-eyed suburban mom whose earnest attempts to please are painfully tolerated by her adopted and brooding daughter, Rose. The blond, dark-skinned "white" mom is about as real as the Italian-American "savages" that whoop-whooped across the big screen a half-century ago....The joke, however, is the icing on the cake. The depth of Blood River lies in Mr. Monkman's ability to let people be people, warts, beauty and all....It is in the richness of this complexity, the robustness of good and bad, that Mr. Monkman has found his niche for native cinema, a nascent industry in which a younger generation is showing the world their realities....Mr. Monkman and Ms Gordon are pushing the edge, but they are packaging their product in a slick, impressive wrap."
Catherine Mitchell, Winnipeg Free Press, March 1, 2001

"One of the more anticipated films at this year's Local Heroes Film Festival, from an Aboriginal standpoint, was Kent Monkman's Blood River. The Manitoba Cree filmmaker and artist wrote and directed the short film which packs an emotional wallop in a mere 24 minutes running timeÖ.Blood River features a number of fine performances by Tantoo Cardinal, Jennifer Podemski, Brandon Oakes, and Greg OdjigÖ..it provides audiences with a daring look into the harsh circumstances of life as an Aboriginal adopteeÖ.Podemski excels in the role of Rose, a rich adoptee searching for her rootsÖ.One of the more interesting casting choices in the film is that of Tantoo Cardinal, who does double duty in the filmÖmaking the two characters meet onscreen is quite tricky to master but Monkman pulls it off with no mistake or hesitation. This film is a definite must see." Melissa Cooper, The DRUM, March 2001

"Kent Monkman's Blood River does a dazzling cut-and-mix job on the dilemmas of living urban and native."
NOW Magazine, Sept. 7, 2000

The National Post, Sept. 9, 2000:

The Toronto Star, Sept. 8, 2000

Kent's Statement

Making Blood River was important not just for me, but also for Native young people who I hope will be inspired to make their own movies. There have been few Native filmmakers as role models to learn from, much less a Native filmmaking tradition or narrative genre from which to reference our cultural perspectives. Blood River is a fictional story, but it is based on the true, and sometimes disturbing, stories of Native friends and relatives.

As a filmmaker, I'm not interested in only focussing on the negative. It exists and it is important to acknowledge it, but I also want to see the wide range of our realities more accurately portrayed in cinema. To do this, we need to see the darker side as well as the humour that is part of our daily lives. Our storytelling tradition has always been full of laughter, even if the stories are sad or dark. If the audience laughs, then maybe I have their attention. If I have their attention, maybe they will see what's below the surface.

We have all grown up watching Indians on TV and in Hollywood movies, as seen through the eyes of white writers and directors. Most of the time, the Indian roles were also played by white actors, usually Italian-Americans. These characters were so unreal and one dimensional that they inspired me to have some fun by making the only white character in Blood River an broad stereotype. By casting Tantoo Cardinal, one of North America's finest Native actors, also in the role of a well intentioned white person, I wanted to make a political/historical point with a joke. In my film, the white world is like a perfect TV melodrama, stiff and unreal, while the Native world is edgy, imperfect, at times disturbing and even dangerous. The film, like the techno-powwow music we created for the soundtrack, is meant to represent what many of us Native people are now: post-Indian, urban, creative, and evolving----a far cry from the romantic illusions portrayed in Hollywood movies. It's about time!

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