¶¡ÏãÔ°AV

Below the Radar Transcript

Episode 261:  Star Stories — with Lisa Jackson

Speakers: Samantha Walters, Am Johal, Lisa Jackson

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Samantha Walters  0:04
Hello listeners! I’m Sam with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Lisa Jackson, an award-winning filmmaker, whose work spans hybrid documentary, installation, VR, and more. Am and Lisa discuss her latest work, Wilfred Buck, a portrait of Cree Elder Wilfred Buck, an Indigenous star lore expert. They also talk about her time as an undergraduate student at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV and her journey as a filmmaker. Enjoy the episode!

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Am Johal  0:46 
Hello, welcome everyone to Below the Radar. Glad you could join us again this week. We have a special guest with us, filmmaker Lisa Jackson. Welcome Lisa. 

Lisa Jackson  0:56 
Oh, thanks for having me. 

Am Johal  0:58 
Delighted you could join us. I know that you're in town for our wonderful documentary film festival, DOXA, here. I've already gone to see one film already, and you have a new film that you'll be showing here: Wilfred Buck. Wondering if you can— First of all, let's start by you introducing yourself, and then we'll get into the film.

Lisa Jackson  1:17 
Yeah. So, I'm Lisa Jackson. I lived for many years in Vancouver, actually, the better part of my life. I'm originally— Was raised in Toronto, but I'm mixed heritage. My mother is Anishinaabe from Aamjiwnaang, which is near Sarnia, Ontario, and my father is mixed settler. And yeah, I've split my life sort of between Toronto and Vancouver. I'm now in Toronto, and I've been making films for about 20 years now, I guess. Yeah.

Am Johal  1:47 
And you also did an undergrad at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV, right?

Lisa Jackson  1:51  
I did my undergrad— I loved my undergrad at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV. I did film. And it was when the film program was actually up in these portables, up on ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV, up on the hill. And there was kind of crazy dangling ceiling tiles and stuff like that. It was very, it was very legit. And it was actually really awesome. We actually shot on film. And I think it was that program that made me kind of fall in love with film as a medium, not just like a way to say things. Yeah.

Am Johal  2:19 
I'm going to come back and talk to you about your process of filmmaking in a bit, but perhaps you can share a little bit about where this project on Wilfred Buck came from.

Lisa Jackson  2:29 
Oh, yeah. Well, the story goes like this, I was invited by a friend to a University of Toronto panel about indigenous star knowledge. And I thought that was, like, an interesting thing to do, so I went. And then after the panel, which was interesting, I was chatting with some people, and they said, Oh, we're actually having a small, informal star knowledge kind of conference, indigenous star knowledge conference. I said, Oh, if I can, could I crash it tomorrow? Because it wasn't open to the public. Anyway, the next day, I did go, and someone was just talking and saying, they basically said, Wilfred Buck's name like, "Oh, I'm Co—He's co curating an exhibit at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology, and he should be here." Anyway, what happened to me is that I had this weird zap, and the voice, this voice— I'm not crazy— but a voice came in my head and said, someone has to make a film about Wilfred Buck. And so that's not something I'd specifically heard of, but as an artist, I've had these sort of creative zaps before. And so fast forward, I reached out to him, and he said, "Well, I've just written my life story. Nobody knows except my wife and my daughter. I'll email it to you." And he emailed it to me, and when I read the first page, I was just like, completely blown away by his voice and so I reached out to him, and we started on a kind of long process of exploring what it could look like to make a film about his life story.

Am Johal  3:58 
Now, you've made so many different works, from shorts to feature length. And can you give us maybe a little bit of a sense of your creative process? Now that you're an experienced filmmaker, you get this bright idea. This is like a great project. You've contacted the person, but of course, making a film, telling the story, the choices of editing, of how to make it come to life. What did that look like in this context?

Lisa Jackson  4:27 
Well, I mean, the whole process from beginning to end was around six years. So it's just huge. About half of that was development. And so the first thing I did was reach out to the National Film Board. So I did know their— one of their Winnipeg based producers, which is where Wilfred lives. So Alicia Smith was my first call. And I was really lucky that the NFB, who takes a lot of time and care with their development process, agreed to come on board for development. And the reason that was so important is because Wilfred was an elder. It was not like I called him and he immediately was like, oh, yeah, sure, let's make a movie, like there was a process of us getting to know each other and spending time. And he actually, when I formally did ask him if we could talk about developing something. He said, "Well, why don't you come to the Sundance ceremony. I'm a Sundance chief." He's a ceremonial leader. Come in the summer, and it's a several— Four day ceremony, and we'll talk after that. And when I went, I did understand why he made that invitation, and it went well, obviously. And like, I learned so much, and it really helped me to understand the core of what he was about. Anyway, there was a huge development process, and that's about raising the money, but it's also about, for me, critically, that relationship and knowing what you're doing. And then about three years of making the project. And I couldn't really, I don't think anyone wants to hear all the details of the creative decisions that went into it, because there's so many. But suffice it to say, it's what they call a hybrid documentary. It means that there's largely three strands. There's what we call verité, which is following him today, and his work as a star knowledge educator and ceremonial leader. There's his past. So I took excerpts from his book, and I turned those, these scenes that just leapt off the page, like I say it's like I was reading as though Jack Kerouac wrote a book about growing up Cree in northern Manitoba. It was just like his voice is so funny and sharp and poetic. So I brought a bunch of those to life using both archive as well as these reenactments with actors and stuff like that. And then there was a sort of poetic or I call deep time thread. And those have a variety of things, but there it's about the stars. But I also did this kind of complex photography of meteorite slices seen through a microscope that looked just sort of epic and cosmos-like. So, just to give you a kind of broad strokes of the scope of what the film encompassed. And then I just said about, you know, you just tick all the boxes like, okay, got the, got some documentary stuff. And then you, you know, I spent probably about a year editing to put the film all together. 

Am Johal  7:14 
And, so tell us more about Wilfred Buck. You met him in this context, and of course, he covers a lot of background in his own book, but clearly a very charismatic person, and who is in this very kind of specific area, but also connected up visiting NASA and other places, and in this whole other world of people who look at the sky, who make sense of it in different ways, and also that brings other traditions into the way this can be thought about.

Lisa Jackson  7:44 
Yeah, well, Wilfred is incredible, like he's so many— he does so much. He's almost 70, and I just can't get over how much he does still. So he's known for being a star knowledge expert. So he is Cree. He's from Opaskwayak, Cree Nation, up near The Pas, Manitoba, and he has traveled all over. I mean, a lot of what he does is he travels with an inflatable dome, ie, kind of a miniature planetarium, and he tells stories of the night sky from mostly his Cree knowledge perspective. And what's pretty incredible about that is that how he came to sort of surface this knowledge was not, you know, he didn't Google it, and he didn't go to the library. For many years, 15 years, he was an indigenous science educator in Manitoba, and he went around to communities all around Manitoba, indigenous communities, and did lots of things around like looking at science through an indigenous lens. Because, of course, indigenous people were scientists. They, you know, the language might be different from what we know in Euro Western science, but it's absolutely there. So that's what he did for a long time. And through that process, he met elders, and he had time to sit down and discuss things. And he started— these stories started to kind of come out. And he realized that for young people, connecting to the knowledge of their ancestors through the night sky was just immediately riveting. And he leaned more and more into that. And so now he's written two books about the night sky and his life story, and he is traveling very widely. You mentioned NASA. I mean, in my film, he has an invite to Harvard faculty club, and he's talking to a bunch of professors. So I will say, like making the film, this openness to the knowledge that Wilfred has is there, but I will say that I think the discussion can go further about how do these two kinds of worldviews actually have a meaningful conversation? Because my experience was that a lot of times, at least in Western science, and really great scientists have said, you know, we deal in things that are like, very specifically measurable or like look a certain way. That's what Western science does, and indigenous science being more holistic and interconnected, sometimes the language, the ability to really meaningfully discuss those things, is a little bit hampered. So I think Wilfred is at the center of that conversation. But I hope that the film can also invite that conversation to progress further.

Am Johal  10:24 
There's a part in the film where he's talking about the use of the North Star for navigation. He's talking about being in the canoe, and it's quite memorable in terms of, like, this practical side of looking at the sky and the gaze. And the, you know, the reasons for it as well.

Lisa Jackson  10:41 
Yeah. I mean, I think star knowledge, what I just said about indigenous knowledge being multi it's, it's, it's looking at everything. So, yes, it's about how you navigate. It's also about how the seasons change. You know, one of the stories in the film, and that he shares, is about the rattle. Well, the rattle is a beautiful story about the sound of the ice and the spring break up, but it's kind of more than... So it's a way to actually know when is the ice melting and when is spring coming, and what are all the things that happen on the land. But it actually is also about the nature of creation and renewal and the cycles of how things come back to life and so as well. I think there's a story that I think is one of my favorites, which is about the sturgeon star constellation. And that's, you know, loosely speaking, what we call the seven generations idea that, you know, we really have to be thinking not just about us, but the ones that came before and what they passed on to us, and what we'll be passing on, because that will become, you know, the next generations and what they carry forward. And the responsibility of our role in the chain of, you know, the generations and the continuity of knowledge. And so that's a star story that is telling us how we can be as people. And so to, you know, I think people sometimes want to say, oh, you know, it's about navigation. It's about, you know, the cycles of nature, yes. And it's also kind of these stories about how we can be and all of that, you know, we don't have to divide it up. We can just call that, you know, knowledge. And I think that's what Wilfred so beautifully kind of shows in the film, is how interconnected all of it is, because he's also deeply passionate about his community and people and helping people heal and come together and reconnect in ways that I think all of us could learn from. You know, in this day and age where everybody's so fractured and so often feeling isolated, I think one of the strongest kind of feelings people take from the film is this sense of like the warmth of the community and what it really means to belong, and how actually transformational that can be.

Am Johal  12:46 
Now, you've had a chance to screen the film in various contexts, in different communities and festivals. Wondering how has the reception been?

Lisa Jackson  12:55 
Yeah, well, it's been great screening the film. I'm actually pretty early on. This is my third festival, so the first one was in Copenhagen at a documentary festival called CPH docs. Which is really interesting, because I wasn't sure how much context there would be in Copenhagen for a Cree story, but it was, it was amazing to see how a bunch of... It was an international audience, but a largely European audience connected with it, and actually were quite moved. And Wilfred, a few times, has commented, we had invited some Greenlandic folks in Denmark-colonized Greenland, and they came up to him after the screening and said, "You know this story that you're telling about Northern Canada. It's exactly the same, it's exactly the same story for us. And this is the story of colonized people." And you know, I think it really landed for Wilfred. You know how international the story of colonization is in a very visceral way. And then we just, I just came from Hot Docs, which is in Toronto, which is where I live now. And so that was fantastic. And as a filmmaker, one thing I can say is, like, there's a relationship you have to the film as you're making it, and then the film, effectively, is born, you know, it's released, and then you kind of get to know it in a totally different way, because it's about, you know, everybody who watches it and their relationship with it. And I think that part, I'm really enjoying that part. I mean, I think it's kind of like having a kid, you have an intimate relationship with this child you're carrying, and then the child is out in the world and having its own experiences, and you're sort of care taking and watching, but it's a different journey. Yeah.

Am Johal  14:34 
I've talked to writers who feel the same way about books. You know, any kind of creative project is the process of making it come to be, but then when it's out there with the audience, it's a different relation, absolutely. And there will be a number of students, film students, in particular, listening to this interview. And so I want to speak to you a little bit around that creative journey that you had from being an undergraduate student studying film, to, you know, making so many different works in different ways, and to speak a little bit about your own creative journey in terms of, you know, where your practice started to where you are now, which is probably juggling multiple projects ongoing. But how you've changed as an artist or a creative producer in how you approach projects and subject matters.

Lisa Jackson  15:27 
Yeah, well, it's been a long journey, and I've made a lot of work, and it's tough. I often say that's— what you just asked me, is one of the harder questions for me to answer, because I'm inside the journey of it. And I think I heard, although I'm going to answer the question, I heard, I don't know if this is where it started, but I heard that Steven Soderbergh, who's an incredible filmmaker, once said, no, no, no, no, I'm the bird. You're the ornithologist, to someone who asked him to interpret his work. But I think I can say that from the beginning, even at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV film school, I saw that I wasn't... I was a bit more hybrid in my tendencies. I was more unconventional. But it's kind of like for me, that's just the ideas that I have. You know, I wasn't really, although I've made a more like a current affairs documentary or a short fiction film that's like more just a classic fiction film. You know, the majority of my work has been what you might call more hybrid or unusual or mixed media. So I do feel like each project sort of takes me to the next. I think if you look at the trajectory, you can see different evolutions or similarities. So for example, I think earlier in my career, my very first short film was called Suckerfish, and it was about my relationship with my mother and my indigenous identity and a lot of the working through the difficulties, because she experienced a lot of trauma as a residential school survivor. And then that meant my childhood was very chaotic, and it was me kind of reckoning with that history. And the way that I did it was through, you know, stylized reenactments and some animation. So it already at the beginning, and narration, like many things that I've kind of returned to over and over again. And it was me grappling with my own personal history of how colonization, essentially, like flows through my family. And if you look at my filmography, I think over time, there's been a movement away towards, like, what are the cultural teachings, or what are those, you know, pieces now in my community—They're fairly — Aamjiwnaang. I think a lot of them... So number one, I wasn't raised there because my mother, also little history lesson, had married a non Indigenous man, and so up until 1985 if that happened, an indigenous woman lost her native status, so she couldn't be on the reserve. And that was the case, you know, when I was young. So none of us had status until 1985 and so my relationship to the reserve is like, I'm an urban Indian, urban indigenous person, but still, you know, my mother was raised speaking her language. She lost it in residential school. Like the sort of pain of that disruption to community and to culture is really present for me. And I think while that's always there, looking at the Colonial traumas, I think that more so I'm moving towards, like, what are the cultural underpinnings? Like, what? What can we reclaim? Right? And I'm not Cree. Wilfred's Cree. So the current film I have, it's not exactly from my community, but there's so many similarities, and the kind of core concepts are so similar. And so whether it's indigenous languages and the ideas and the world views that are inherent within them, I've been more and more drawn to those. 

So I did a huge installation at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV called Transmissions, revolved around how indigenous languages, and in this case, there are quite a number that were part of that exhibit. They actually are a doorway, even if you don't speak it, if you understand how radically different the construction, the way that these languages express the world and our place in the world, it like is completely still one of the most mind blowing things I've ever experienced, is to start to get a sense of how differently indigenous languages in North America see the World, and so it was a little window onto that. So I have more and more found myself trying to convey something that is in many ways hard to convey as I'm filming. Like that is experiential, in terms of, you know, ceremony, this ancestral knowledge has elements to it that are fundamentally, I do think now, tied to ceremony and some of these deeper ideas. And the same thing I'm trying to explain in English, how other languages might entirely reshape your view of the world. So, you know, I'll give you one example, because I can't help myself. But, you know, English is predominantly nouns, and that's objects, right? That's things. Many indigenous languages, I can't speak to all of them, but they're predominantly verbs. And what that means is you're more about what's the action. And when you have an action, it's implicitly things in relationship. Because, you know, if I move the cup or something, that's a... That's me in relationship to something. So it becomes a lot more about flux, flow, inter-relationship, and much less about static objects in space. So that's like one small example. And so I think with my craft, I've always been reaching for how can I evoke things that are a little ephemeral or like hard to grasp. At the same time, I'm kind of a nerd. So I do think that I also do a certain amount of explaining, you know, trying to explain and reach towards things that are a little tricky to wrap your head around.

Am Johal  20:47 
You mentioned Suckerfish. That was very influential for so many filmmakers. We've interviewed Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, who's made a film that, you know, inspired by that a bit, and I know that you've been involved with the Embargo Collective, wondering if you could share a little bit about your work with that collective.

Lisa Jackson  21:06 
Yeah, the Embargo Collective had two iterations. It was the brainchild of Danis Goulet, who's a Cree Metis filmmaker, lives in Toronto. Her father's actually from The Pas area as well. And she noticed how, relative to the mainstream film community, there was so much collaboration and supportiveness and kind of cohesion in the indigenous film community. It just was, you know, and there's been incredible indigenous filmmakers, especially in Canada, going back to Alanis Obomsawin, right. Started in, I think the 60s, for sure the 70s, and there's been a lot of film making, you know, especially out here in the West, you know, a lot of incredible filmmakers. But in my sort of era, there was a number of us that were starting to make films at the same time, and we were really working like reaching out to each other and asking advice. And then with the rise of a film festival called imagineNATIVE in Toronto, my first time was 2004 with my first film. That kind of marked an era of a lot of us. And Danis ran that festival, actually, Danis Goulet at the time. A lot of us coming together. And there was this incredible sort of sense of, it was kind of a magical time where it was a very scrappy, kind of poorly funded festival. And yet there were like, as time went on, like we were coming out from all across Canada, and then, you know, some American like Navajo folks and, you know, Maori folks and Aboriginal folks from Australia. So it started to become a little bit more and more. We all got connected, I would say, you know, for the 10 or 15 years after that, and there was this kind of sense of like, oh, there's something really special about the way that we work together. So Danis wanted to sort of, kind of, in honor of the way that we work together, have this project called the Embargo Collective. There would be six of us. The first iteration, there was six of us, and we were all filmmakers. And what we were going to do is sit together for a couple days, talk about our practice, talk about what was hard, like, kind of like a very, you know, safe space to discuss where we were as filmmakers. And then at the end of it, everybody would be assigned a short film with a bunch of restrictions, hence the word embargo. And so I, for example, was assigned to do a musical with heavy metal in it, and all of us had a restriction that we weren't allowed to use English in our films. And amazing films came out of that. And you know, the big, famous person who was part of that first one was Taika Waititi was one of the six. And so I think it was about five years later, a few years later, we did a second one, also run by Danis. And this one was all women and it was a very similar concept. And I would— but I would say it was like it kind of evolved, especially because it was all women. I would say the first one... what I made my— The first one, I made my short film Savage, which I think is one of my best known pieces, which was a musical with heavy metal in it, and no English. And it's online, so if anyone wants to look it up, just Google my name, and savage, you'll see it. And then the second one... But the first one, there was a bit of macho. It was kind of like when we were choosing what restrictions to give, it's kind of like whatever made somebody cringe and go, oh, I don't want to do that. And then that's what you'd get, right? And the second one, I think we're a little more supportive and trying to, like, oh, what would be interesting for this person, and stretch them? And the other part that we did is we all picked names out of a hat. So whoever's name you picked, you made something that in some way honored their work. So we were also kind of honoring each other's work as a community as part of that second one.

Am Johal  24:48 
You know, beyond films, you've done installations, and you've also done work with Virtual Reality, First Light. I've heard, when we interviewed Leanne Simpson, she mentioned that term as well. But wondering if you can share a little bit of that project.

Lisa Jackson  25:03 
So, yeah, that's great Leanne mentioned it. Biidaaban means first light. It's kind of the first light, just before dawn and Biidaaban was actually, grew out of, it was kind of a crawlery project, to this installation I was mentioning, which was Transmissions. Which itself, I would say, you know, I've gone on a bit about my fascination with languages. When I had made my first short film, I wanted to do a documentary about the power of indigenous languages to, like, see the world in a different way. And at the time, I didn't have a big, I would say, tool kit, and I found myself a little stymied for like, how am I going to really convey this? And, you know, what am I going to do, interview linguists? Or like, how is this going to work? It was one of the few projects I didn't actually see to completion. I didn't quite find the way, but it sat there in the background, and then at some point, and I forget what sparked it— Oh, I went to do my Masters. And I was thinking more deeply about things, and I thought, Oh, my God, it's got to be an installation, because at its core, I sort of felt that the nature of these languages, and what I had learned about some of the different perspectives was that it's kind of embodied, it's experiential, it's relational. So you know, when you're thinking about staring at a rectangle screen, like we do, watching, that didn't feel appropriate, but walking through an alive kind of installation and being embodied and kind of relating to it physically felt like way more in keeping with what I sensed was like the underlying piece of what I wanted to do. So I had this idea to make this large scale, three part installation, extremely ambitious. I was very... It was at ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV in the fall of 2019 along the way, though, I was like, you know, there could be a version of this that's also equally embodied and has some of the same ideas, and it could be a virtual reality kind of perspective on it. And so I brought it to the National Film Board, and they also thought it was a good idea. And it came out first because the installation was epic and took forever. 

And the VR also, we just like, really hit the ground running, and so Biidaaban: First Light was an eight minute VR piece where you essentially are in the center of downtown Toronto, Nathan Phillips Square, but it's almost like it's basically a photorealistic rendering of the place, as though something has happened. The word is not post apocalyptic, but one of the things I've said is it's interesting there's no word for a future place where the current civilization no longer exists, that is not post apocalyptic, which implies that whatever's come after there's some destruction and it's terrible, or like, you expect zombies to jump out or something. But this was sort of weirdly both, like crumbling buildings and like flooded sidewalks, but there's like, so much life growing in it, and there's something really regenerative feeling about it, while it also is clearly kind of in ruins, quote, unquote. And so we made this eight minute, very experiential piece, like there's no real plot to it. But it, yeah, it has, it had a huge impact and a large life, and it went around the world. And I think what it really did, the VR piece Biidaaban was, I think people felt really viscerally. It was different for different people, but I think they felt like that we have sort of control over these cities, like you can look at the city you live in in a different way almost. Like in imagining its dissolution or its evolution, or whatever the radical physical experience that you have when you're inside this VR, you can take it off and look around you at the city, and you go, Okay, well, you know, what are we going to do? Or, you know, a different view, whatever people thought. I think it was actually much more visceral than a, you know, oh, laundry list of this is how we can fix the world, or anything like that. But I would say, a lot of my work, I think, whether it's dealing with historical colonial impacts or things like different ideas of how we relate to the world. I try to do things that people feel in their gut, you know. So they maybe they think about it later, but first they feel it, you know. And I think Wilfred Buck kind of has that going on too. People are like, really feel something. It's very human, deeply human. But there are thoughtful questions, I think, that are raised by Wilfred and his work.

Am Johal  29:31 
From the time that you started making films to now, the distribution of work has changed. You know, technologically, audiences have shifted, and there's different ways of getting work out. With Wilfred Buck, it will eventually be on Crave at some point in about a year or so, or around the time this interview is coming out in the public. But I'm wondering how you think about, especially if we're talking here to some of our listenership who are emerging artists, who are just making work, about how, as a filmmaker, do you think about audience, or is it just something. You make the work and you let other people deal with how it's going to get out into the world, of course, because there's always multiple audiences that potentially are going to be interested or who you want it to get out to.

Lisa Jackson  30:20 
Yeah, well, I mean, that's a great question. I think it's very, it's a very live question, and I don't know that I have any great answers to it. I mean, I think as an indigenous artist, I've always been aware that there can be a categorization, or you're like, oh, this is who it's for, you know. And I think I've always sort of innately, whether it's the form of what I'm doing or where it's placed, I feel like I want to shape shift a little bit, you know, and not be put too tightly into categories. And I think, you know, even my very first film, I remember, I started with, like a humorous one minute animation about what my mother told me our native name was, and there's like an unseating of expectations. And I feel like, for me, that's a response to being stereotyped or thinking this is the expected way you're meant to be, and I kind of chafe against that. But, you know, I think historically, like in my life, I would say, like, make good work, and it just finds the audience. And I still think that's almost like my first— Especially if you're starting out, it's like, there's so much work out there, yet there's not... There's all— the stuff that really connects with people stands out. It always does, you know. And if you don't have that, like, if you have that, then the other stuff becomes easier. And I think for people are trying to find out, what kind of work do I make? That's the most important question, I think, at the beginning of a filmmaker's career. Because my belief is, you know, you might admire this, this filmmaker or this style of work, but I kind of feel like people have a certain like imprint of what they're going to do. And in my case, I do many different things. However, people tell me, if you look at my stuff, they share a style, you know, you can tell it's my work. So I do think I have a sort of DNA that goes out into the stuff that I do. And now that I know a lot of filmmakers, and I see their work, and I know them, I can also see, oh, that work is so you. That work is so you. And so I think people find out what kind of film or art they make when they make it, and it might not be what you think it's going to be. And so the early stages, I think it's really important to protect your relationship with your own creative impulses. And if you think too much about, oh, who's the audience, how am I going to reach them? What kind of things do I want to do? I think you risk like not nurturing what's unique about your own style, voice and message. And I think the number one thing that connects with people is when there's clarity in that. And yes, you can develop it over time. You know your tool kit as it were, but I think the authenticity of what you have to say and maybe the way you want to say it, it's almost at first, I think you build it like a muscle. But I think at first, my first short film felt really radical to me. And I will tell you that my sort of unconventional ideas for how to execute it like, that I would have animation mixed with stylized reenactments with narration, like people were just telling me, oh my god, narration is terrible. Oh my god. Animation is never very successful. Oh my god. Reenactments are the worst. Literally, the main things people— oh and don't work with kids, like I was doing all of those things in one film, and yet it did really well. Like it hung together. There was a cohesiveness to it. So I think sometimes, and especially at the beginning, a lot more people will say to you, like, oh, I don't know if that's gonna work. And I still remember a, still a dear friend of mine, but he says he looked at my plan for this film, and he goes, oh, this looks like a garage sale. Like, what isn't in this movie, you know, like? And so it takes a lot of fortitude to kind of, and you don't know if it's going to be successful, to be honest. Like, even that first short film, it was classically what they call it, say, is a calling card film. Like, it did go everywhere. But I had no idea if it was any good when I was done. It was not until an audience saw it. I really just didn't. So in terms of distribution now, I think even people who are the quote, unquote experts of it all are like, we have— it seems like everyone's like, we don't know. And so I say maybe that's something I should grapple with more. But if you're starting out, like, try to just make the best work you can. Yeah.

Am Johal  34:27
What are you working on now? Or what do you hope to be working on? I just— You're so prolific that I imagine you're juggling multiple projects. That you have plans for future works.

Lisa Jackson  34:41
Oh yeah. Well, I mean, of... In my life, I've typically had a few things on the go at once. One thing I will say is Wilfred Buck, the film, required a lot of me, and so I think maybe for the first time in my career, I'm not sure, since the beginning, maybe, I was like, just in the last year to two years, I was just Wilfred Buck. And that's pretty unique for me, but it did require everything I had, and I'm so glad I, you know, had that discipline, to kind of just be like, no. Now it has to— And in fact, one of my friends said to me, you got, like, just listened to me and said, you got to drop the other things right now. And you just have to, like, full bore on this one, it needs, snd it did. And so having said that, yeah, I think moving forward, I do actually really want to be present for the film going out in the world. So I'm trying to protect my time for the next number of months so that I can spend a certain amount of time attending screenings, talking to whatever conversations arise out of the film. I think the film is going to provoke a lot of interesting conversation, and I kind of want to be present for that, or be part of that in whatever way makes sense. But I am, there's kind of, there's a few things, and lots of filmmakers are a bit cagey. Maybe I'm gonna do that too. But no, it's, I think right now, there is an amazing... There's an amazing Canadian novel that I'll be adapting that could be a feature film, what would be a feature film that I would direct. And so that is where I think I'm going to put my energy right after this. And I'm not going to say what it is right now, but it's a beautiful novel that I've loved for years, and it's a very poetic look at an indigenous family, kind of dealing with the fallout of a lot of difficult trauma, but like what it means to heal and come to reconciliation with your own family. So I think that's going to be exciting to try to render. And to me, it's just completely filmic, so I've never done a full feature fiction, so that will be new. And then the other thing I'm pretty excited about, if you see the film, I have a great love of the fish called sturgeon. And they're incredible. And in BC, you know, there's incredible, huge sturgeon, in especially the Fraser and the Nechako  rivers. Anyway, there's a whole long story about why I love the sturgeon, but I think I'm not done with them yet. So I'm considering perhaps a feature length documentary that would be more like cinematic tour, sort of look at sturgeon, them as a creature, their plight, they're hugely endangered. But also, like bring in some more elements, kind of historically, to make it a bigger picture, that actually kind of is taking a look at us as humans, and a lot of elements of what I think the sturgeon are can be very emblematic of and kind of reflect back to us. So that's very early on. That's not the most cohesive, but I... I'm just very in love with these creatures, and so I think I have to try to make another film on them.

Am Johal  37:47 
I've seen some in the Fraser.

Lisa Jackson  37:48 
Oh, have you?

Am Johal  37:49 
Wondering with the film on Wilfred Buck, in the process of making that work and having the kind of duration and commitment that are required to make the work, how did it change you? And I guess, to some degree, and I know Wilfred isn't with us right now, but how did it change him? Because, in a way, this is going to go out in the world as well, and way for the story he has, the really incredible story, to be shared with more people.

Lisa Jackson  38:21 
Well, I mean, I can speak to how it changed me. I think Wilfred is so... You know, he's been through so much in life, and I know this film is gonna have a big impact on how his life is. He's also just incredibly humble. So, you know, I think he shared his story because he knew it was a story that could be helpful, for so many people had told him for so many years, oh, you should write down your story. You should write down your story. And, you know, just by happenstance, I got this weird zap and reached out to him just when he had finished it. So, you know, I think something was going on there that was meant to be. But in writing a story, I think he, at that time, had sort of acknowledged, not like, oh, I want people to know about me, but that there's a lot people can take away, you know, even from his journey out of addiction and back to the culture and creating community and the teachings, and, you know, all the different things that he so kind of humorously and elegantly weaves into like, this is kind of what led to him having such a hard life in his family. So there's just so much that's there. This is another level. So I can't speak to like, because this is elevating, certainly his story to a new audience. But I also feel like his, I know that his reasons for sharing his story are so... He's got so much integrity, and he does, like what he does, he does for people, not for himself. And so I hope, and I think that for him, it will be more of what he's already had, because he's quite famous, like amongst quite a large audience, so it's not going to be brand new. I'm not plucking him out of obscurity by any means. It might be a little bit larger platform, but I also think he's so grounded and why this story is important and it's not about him. So I think that puts him in a really solid place to be able to come out and be part of it, and I— it's one of the biggest honors of my life to be able to spend this time with him and his story and to share it. 

So I mean, the line I've said for a while is, you know, while I was shaping the story, it was shaping me. And even the editor has sort of said to me. There were three great editors on this, the one who did most of the kind of final work, and like the core shaping of it, we both have said like, yeah, I'm just not the same person, after spending all this time working with Wilfred's story and his teachings. And I think in part, that's because what he shares, it's his, it's him, but it's also like the power of the knowledge that he has gotten from his elders and that has been passed along. And you know, indigenous knowledge is so often through sharing these stories that they evolve or they mean something. You know, you learn more the more you hear them, and as your life goes on, they might mean something different to you now than they did, would have five years ago. So there's such a richness to the teachings, and I've had this experience of deeply, kind of residing with them for, you know, I would say, three years and that has really changed. And so I, what I can say is, for me, I think it's one of the most hopeful things that I've ever done, and I hope that, like some part of that can transfer to the audience. Because I think, you know, I'm not saying that people should run off to ceremony, you know, or maybe there's other versions of ceremony for people, you know. But I do think that the teachings that animate the work that Wilfred does are very powerful and very needed at this time for like everybody, and as someone who is informed about the world and worried about the world, then, you know, I can go on my rants, and I listen to the podcast and some, you know, there's so much to be worried about, and that's so legitimate. I feel like sometimes, the how that comes through, and the teachings that is shared in the film. It's like, Okay, do I know exactly the what of how we make the world a better place? Probably not. You know, I'm spending too much time in the edit suite, but I think the how of the teachings that Wilfred conveys in such a great like, charismatic, low key, humble, like, there's just nothing didactic about him. I think that those teachings are very powerful, and that I hope people— I do think that people are coming away with this sense, like, there's something truly hopeful, illuminating. It's not just about the teachings, but I think how we come together in community. And for me, the end of the film is a lot about community, and I think that's something that we can all kind of look around and say, you know, how can I contribute? You know, like not just what's in it for me, but how can I be of service, really?

Am Johal  42:55 
Lisa, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar. Always great to speak with you.

Lisa Jackson  43:00 
Thank you so much for having me.

[theme music]

Samantha Walters  43:06 
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by ¶¡ÏãÔ°AV’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Head to the show notes to learn more about Lisa’s work, and thanks from all of us at Below the Radar.