experimental

In the early 1960s the Canadian government conducted an experiment in social engineering. Three 12-year-old Inuit boys, Peter Ittinuar, Zebedee Nungak and Eric Tagoona, were sent to live with White families in Ottawa, to be educated in White schools. The consequences for the boys, their families, their identity, and their culture were brushed aside. The bureaucrats who brought the boys South did not anticipate the outcome of their experiment. The boys grew up to become leaders of their people, and lifelong thorns in the side of the government. The battles they fought and won were instrumental in the establishment of aboriginal rights in Canada, and led to the creation of Nunavut, the world’s largest self-governing aboriginal territory. But it all came at enormous personal cost.

A descent into the labyrinths of memory: Jelena and her recollections, happy or not, of childhood. Memories of when she lived in Croatia, and of when she lived in Canada. Her mother at the beach. Her father horsing around in the grocery store. The man who lived in the basement and abused her when she was a child. An audio-visual poem, Jelena’s Song overlays the young woman’s narration on her photos, sharp and blurry, faded and vivid, resulting in a fragmentary reconstruction of her memories. With candour and sensitivity, Jelena reclaims her own identity through her past, disarming us with her courage and will.

The walls in the prison crumble revealing a past that has been covered by layers of thick yellow paint. Pain when left unvisited turns into amnesia, history cannot absolve everything.