Canadian Women Film Directors Database
home search browse about contact français

Quick search by surname

Puskwa Moostoos Waskikun (Home of the Buffalo)

Directed by Jude Norris
Canada, 2007 (video art, 3 minutes, black and white)

Film Description:
"This is a video triptych projected on three screens positioned like 3 sides of a square, creating a room within a room. [...] The Buffalo herd imagery is a combination of footage from the 1920's archival film Home of the Buffalo and video shot by the artist and post-produced in B/W to create a consistency and timelessness between images. The images are visible from all sides, and the viewer may enter and/or walk around to experience them. The installation visuals are accompanied by a sound landscape of the thundering herds, creating an immersive multimedia portrait of Puskwamoostoos. Plains peoples' inseparability from the buffalo, both real and metaphorical, makes the experience of Puskwamoostoos Waskikun unavoidably historical, yet at the same time it is a strongly aesthetic and abstract work. The particular impact of the piece depends largely on the viewer's cultural vantage point and experience, but irregardless of this, the combined simplicity, intensity and poetry of the sounds & visuals, and the immersive physicality can be very emotionally evocative. The combination of both archival and contemporary footage of this iconic animal add another layer to the charged associations it carries. The historical movement and yet timelessness created between these generations of the Buffalo Nation open a dialogue pertaining not only to the great changes in recent North American history, but also to the survival of all peoples and creatures."
-- V tape (source)

(sources)


home search browse about contact français