Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from November, 2022

On Hidden Letters (2022) & Why Artists Are Forgotten

The population of Haida Gwaii were some of the first people to watch  Edge of the Knife (2018), a horror film set in the 19th century recounting the tale of a man changing into Gaagiixiid (a wildman figure common throughout their culture's folklore) after committing an accidental act of violence. This would be the first feature film to use only Haida as dialogue, a language with only 24 native speakers . Many of the actors in the film were not fluent themselves and had to attend a two week language boot camp where elders were invited to teach Haida to younger generations. Not only was this film a milestone in its own right, the production and distribution of the film became a way to prevent the language from being forgotten. As Adeana Young, one of the stars of the film, stated:  "Not long after the language is gone, the culture is gone [which] is scary, really scary." In her second documentary feature, Violet Du Feng, along with co-director Qing Zhao, present a story of