Guillaume Langlois' Historytelling (2018) is exclusively showing August 15 – September 14, 2018 on MUBI in most countries in the world as part of the series Canada's Next Generation.
Historytelling is a short documentary essay which seeks to examine our relationship with History with a capital H, and show the importance of its influence on building our identity.
My love of history began when I was a teenager, at the same time as my faith in the possibility of an independent Québec. So for a long time, my political education played a major role in my appreciation of historical narratives. But this political certainty and confidence in History developed some cracks along the way. I ran into a considerable obstacle: the First Nations.
Where I come from, they’re called Innu, Attikamek, Cree or Huron-Wendat. There are eleven nations spread over the territory of Québec province but their presence is too often obscured by the ignorance and indifference of the majority. Their struggle for autonomy, rather than making a statement, is curiously ignored by most of my fellow-citizens.
Some of the latter call themselves Canadians, some just Québécois, but over and beyond these national identities, claims and resentment between anglophones and francophones, there’s the overwhelming matter of aboriginal identity which we have tried to deny or minimize. It’s like a mirror we don’t want to look at or a story we refuse to hear.
This attitude has manifested itself in several ways through the years and is still prevalent today in the history books we pass on to our children. Always the same threadbare information from the colonial masters’ point of view. So I decided to re-examine the subject myself with the help of some children who are still young enough not to be too corrupted by this history teaching and who are only influenced by family or the prevailing social dialogue. I also had this bias: if we usually approach the question of First Nations with the arrival of Jacques Cartier, as if they appeared at the very moment when the Europeans discovered them, that’s when we’ll stop talking about white people or non-aboriginals in western fashion. For once, let’s reverse the roles. This will make a better story with a happier end. It all depends on your point of view.