Annie MacDonald Langstaff workshop 2024 | Film screening with Tracey Deer

Please join us for a screening of the acclaimed film, Beans, followed by a question-and-answer period with Director Tracey Deer. Beans is the coming-of-age story of a Mohawk girl who must grow up fast and become her own kind of warrior during the armed stand-off known as the 1990 Oka Crisis.

Tracey Deer is a Mohawk filmmaker from Kahnawà:ke. Beans is very much inspired by Tracey’s own coming-of-age journey. As a 12-year-old girl, living through the Oka Crisis had a profound impact on her understanding of herself and her identity as an Indigenous woman. She drew both positive lessons about the importance of standing up for what you believe in and learned firsthand about the incredible resiliency of her people, but she also learned that the world was a dangerous place because of her difference.

About this project, Tracey writes:

This project goes back a long way for me. I was Beans. I was 12 years old when I lived through an armed stand-off between my people and the Quebec and Canadian governments known as The Oka Crisis. The Mohawk Nation of Kanesatake and Kahnawà:ke stood up to a formidable bully - and won. That summer I knew I wanted to become a filmmaker and vowed to one day tell this story.

Canadians did not experience that summer as we did. The media painted us as terrorists. Our neighbours attacked us. Our basic human rights were violated. And instead of offering protection, the provincial police and Canadian army aimed their weapons at us. Sound familiar? Thirty years later, these same scenes are playing out across our television screens as people stand up for racial and social justice across North America. They too are being met with violence, instead of support.

With this film, I want Canadians and audiences around the world to experience what it was like to be in the crosshairs of so much hate and anger, and the destructive impact it had on me and my people. These kinds of experiences shatter innocence, confidence, and hope. Even though this film takes place in 1990 and shows how bad things were, these messages of intolerance, ignorance and indifference are still being heard loud and clear across this country today. We live it every day. Like an infection, hate and anger spreads and multiplies on both sides. We must stop this cycle of violence to protect the next generation from repeating the mistakes of our past and, shamefully, our present.

Bio:

In addition to Beans, Tracey led the acclaimed dramedy Mohawk Girls to five award-winning seasons as its co-creator, director, and co-showrunner. She received four consecutive Canadian Screen Award nominations for Best Direction in a Comedy Series for Mohawk Girls, and she has been honoured at TIFF with the Birks Diamond Tribute Award. She has also worked as a writing co-EP on the Netflix/CBC series Anne with an E. More recently, Tracey has worked on Inner City Girl, a feature about gang life, with Original Pictures.

Tracey’s work has been honoured with two Gemini Awards and numerous awards from multiple film festivals, including Hot Docs. She has worked with the CBC, the National Film Board, and numerous independent production companies throughout Canada in both documentary and fiction. Tracey chairs the Board of Directors of Women in View, a non-profit that promotes greater diversity and gender parity in Canadian media. She has mentored emerging talent as leader of the Director Training Program at the imagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival, as a guest at the National Screen Institute (NSI) New Indigenous Voices Program, and as mentor at NSI’s new IndigiDocs training course.

More detailed information about the making of Beans can be found here.