Film Screening: Mohawk Girls
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
5pm - at Nat Taylor Cinema (N102, Ross Building)
2005, 62 minutes
Written and Directed by Tracey Deer
In MOHAWK GIRLS, filmmaker Tracey Deer intimately captures the lives of three exuberant and insightful Mohawk teenagers as they face their future. Like Amy, Lauren and Felicia, Deer grew up on the Kahnawake Native Reserve, but she left to attend school. Now, she returns to document two critical years in the lives of these teens who are contending with the unwritten rules of their close-knit community. To move away from the reserve means risking the loss of credibility, or worse, rights as a Mohawk. But to stay is to give up the possibilities offered by the "outside world." With insight, humor and compassion, Deer takes us inside the lives of these three teenagers as they tackle the same issues of identity, culture and family she faced a decade earlier.
Interspersed with home videos from Deer's own adolescence, MOHAWK GIRLS is a deeply emotional yet unsentimental look into what it means to grow up Native at the beginning of the 21st century.
Presented by OPIRG and Centre for Women and Trans People at York presents. For more info: ywc@riseup.net or opirg@yorku.ca
