book

Confirmation of My Sins and The Stone Show

21 Pages 2288 Words 1557 Views

In 1963 Zachery Longboy entered this world. His parents were Chipewyan, specifically Sayisi Dene. Only a week into his life Zachery was taken away from his native community. Under circumstances which still remain a mystery Zachery was adopted by a white family. Since the event Zachery has been engulfed in a cloud of confusion: a confusion of identity. Zachery, with film, worked to express what being indigenous really means and how factors of family and history can shape it. Through two of his films, Confirmation of my Sins and The Stone Show, Zachery uses cinematic techniques to show his struggle with identity as well as how an indigenous visuality/identity is shaped by environment, history, and blood. Zachery Longboy is an artist. He uses film as a means of expressing himself, often these films are avant-garde. In 1999 The Stone Show released in art galleries. This nine minute film explores Zachery’s reunion with his biological family and tribe. Images consist of nature such as water, trees, birds, and the moon. Audio heard comes from his biological grandmother and a phone call from his foster mother. Zachery released Confirmation of my Sins in 1995. In it he explores his childhood and memories with his foster family. He uses visuals of bright carpets and an old woman walking. Also, he uses saturated colors of nature and black and white shots of his foster mother. An indigenous visuality is a hard concept to define. There are many films created by many people that all explore different aspect of native culture and life. However, indigenous visuality is a film that is created by a native and attempts to describe, tell a story, or bring awareness to native life and issues. Often indigenous films focus on land and family: they are quite important to native history. Some films are meant only to be understood by native audiences while others have a wide range of audiences. Zachery maintains an indigenous visuality in his art by exploring native identity and how it can be shaped and transformed by your surroundings. Confirmation of my Sins presents an indigenous visuality that explores growing up a native in a white culture and, in fact, if you still are native under the circumstances. The Stone Show shows an indigenous visuality in how time and history impacts modern natives. If a native has been removed from his/her culture for so long there will be something fundamentally missing in his/her native identity. Confirmation of my Sins, as said above, expresses indigenous visuality of confusion in identity from growing up in a culture where you are completely different. The film explores these ideas through its contrasting audio and visuals, manipulated frame rate, sporadic camera movement, camera angles and framing, and lighting. First, Zachery expresses his confusion in his identity through contrasting audio and visuals. The opening shot of the film is a close up of an old lady’s feet walking around a bright red carpet. The audio heard is of a woman talking. It is unclear if the woman who is walking is talking. It’s almost as if Zachery saw where he should be walking yet is hearing different. The fact that the viewer cannot determine where the voice comes from builds distance and adds mystery.Another shot shows the sun setting in a field with tall grass. We hear audio from an old movie. It’s hard to know exactly which film is heard but it seems to be from an American western, words such as “apache” are heard. It’s hard not to think about the vanishing indian here. The sun is setting on nature and, presumably, a cowboy is talking about indians. Old westerns are notorious for spreading the vanishing indian theory. Zachery here seems to say that perhaps his native identity has set with the American culture, the culture he grew up in. Finally, the most interesting contrast is visuals of “how-to” be a native drawings and slowed audio. The audio seems to be of a person saying “sorry” ov

Read Full Essay