ImagineNATIVE Film & Media Arts Festival Celebrates 15 Years With THE EMBARGO COLLECTIVE II, Now thru 10/26

The 15th annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival returns today, October 22-26, 2014 with the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from around the globe, including the return of the Embargo Collective II, a series of five new short films by established and up-and-coming Canadian Aboriginal women filmmakers.

To celebrate their 15th Anniversary, imagineNATIVE will revive their successful commission film project the Embargo Collective. For imagineNATIVE's 10th anniversary in 2009, former Festival Artistic Director Danis Goulet commissioned a series of short films by Indigenous filmmakers from around the world. Inspired by Lars Von Trier's documentary The Five Obstructions - in which Von Trier dared his mentor to remake his own 1967 film five times with a different set of rules imposed each time - Goulet facilitated a similar creative process within a collective model, and the Embargo Collective was born.

The first Embargo Collective program premiered at the 2009 imagineNATIVE Festival to a sold-out crowd and the entire series went on to be selected for the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival. Lisa Jackson's SAVAGE won the 2011 Genie Award for Best Live Action Short Drama, and Helen Haig-Brown's The Cave became a TIFF Top Ten short film, and also screened at Sundance Film Festival in 2011.

Based on the success of the first Embargo Collective, imagineNATIVE has invited Danis Goulet back to select a dynamic group of five filmmakers for the Embargo Collective II. Two members from the original Embargo Collective Lisa Jackson (Anishnaabe), and Zoe Leigh Hopkins (Heiltsuk/Mohawk) are returning, along with three new members, Caroline Monnet (Algonquin), Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (Blackfoot/Sami), and Alethea Arnaquq-Baril (Inuk).

For immediate release today, and leading up to the films' premiere, audiences will be given a special peek into the behind-the-scenes artistic development of the films through the Embargo II Blog, starting today with an insightful and inspiring welcome by Embargo Collective II curator, Danis Goulet.

In addition, the artists of the Embargo Collective II will be honoured for their past media and non-media arts histories in a specially curated exhibition by Rebecca Baird, in partnership with Women's Art Resource Centre. The exhibition will run from mid-October 2014 for one month.

The Embargo Collective II will screen at the 15th annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, October 22-26, 2014.

The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival is the world's largest Indigenous media arts festival that celebrates the latest works by Indigenous peoples at the forefront of innovation in film, video, radio and new media. Each fall, the Festival presents a selection of the most compelling and distinctive Indigenous works from Canada and around the globe. The works accepted reflect the diversity of the world's Indigenous nations and illustrate the vitality and excellence of Native art and culture in contemporary media. In 2013, imagineNATIVE presented 127 works, with 70+ artists in attendance, for a combined audience of 15,558 people throughout the five-day Festival.

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