The Wapikoni Mobile team travels thousands of kilometres every year, bringing mobile film production studios and workshops to indigenous youth in Canada and elsewhere. Wapikoni has been producing films in collaboration with youth since 2004. The organization’s name is a touching tribute to Wapikoni Awashish:
« At the start of the new millennium, director Manon Barbeau wrote a script, with fifteen Atikamekw youth from Wemotaci, for a feature-length film entitled, La fin du mépris. Among these youth was a woman named Wapikoni Awashish, a positive role model and group leader within her community. In May 2002, when she was only 20 years old and undertaking numerous projects, Wapikoni died in a car accident when her car collided into a truck loaded with wood. Already profoundly touched by the number of youth suicides within the community, Manon Barbeau is devastated by the accidental death of her closest collaborator. Consequently, Manon is inspired to create a mobile studio as a place of assembly, intervention, and audiovisual and musical creation for First Nations youth; she names it Wapikoni Mobile, in honour of Wapikoni Awashish. » – Wapikoni.ca
The archived films at Wapikoni.ca represent a diversity of interests, perspectives, and approaches to film making. Andrew Swallow’s Artists on Ice looks at the benefits and meaning that art holds for community members and individuals, while Réal Junior Leblanc’s ‘Uprooted Generation’ is part poem and part documentary, dedicated to the victims of residential schools.
Many of these films are archived on the Wapikoni Mobile site, which showcases the rich legacy of Wapikoni workshops and programming and provides a platform for youth expression and storytelling.
To learn more about Artists on Ice and Uprooted Generation, please visit the ArtBridges Resource Portal.
-Skye Louis, ArtBridges Info Resource Developer
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