Sioux Lookout resident has documentary featured during imagineNATIVE Film Festival

Jesse Bonello - Staff Writer

Sioux Lookout resident, and former documentary filmmaker, Tom O’Connor saw one of his unfinished documentaries from 1969, called Loon Lake, come to life during the 20th Annual imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival.
“It was probably around the middle of September when I got a phone call from the National Film Board,” said Tom O’Connor.
“They were trying to get this one documentary done called Loon Lake. It sat on the shelves in the Film Board for 50 years as an unfinished product. They did some final editing on it and started doing all the credits and stuff for it this year… imagineNATIVE had their film festival in Toronto during the latter part of October, and they had the first-time public showing of this documentary.
“I was in Toronto from the 24 of October to the 27. It was a great experience. That was the first time I had seen the finished documentary and, to be honest, I had forgotten all about it over the last 50 years… It was a really great experience, and I got to renew acquaintances with some people that I hadn’t seen in years,” he said.
O’Connor explained he was part of the first all-Indigenous production unit in Canada, which was called the Indian Film Crew. During his time with the crew, O’Connor said he filmed a number of documentaries.
“Back in 68, we were with a company called the Company of Young Canadians. The National Film Board had decided that they were going to train Native people across Canada to start making documentaries, so we became the first ever all-Aboriginal film crew. We went out to Alberta and we were asked to go into this little community called Loon Lake (now known as the Loon River First Nation), and there was probably about 20 homes in there at the time… The whole documentary is in the Cree language, and what they were talking about was what their aspirations were, for that community, for the future of their children and so on. They never had any reserve status, and they had oil companies drilling all around them. They were afraid that they were going to lose whatever little piece of land that they had, so this is basically what the documentary is all about,” he explained.
“Our brief tenure with the National Film Board, it was the length of our contract back then with the Company of Young Canadians, which was a two year contract. In that two years, or just about two years, I worked on four documentaries. One documentary won eight awards, and it’s been recognized as the first ever Aboriginal music video now. That documentary was called The Ballad of Crow Foot.
“When I think about my time filming documentaries, it was a great experience. Out of the original seven (in the Indian Film Crew), I believe there’s only three of us that are still living,” he said.
O’Connor, who is 71 years old, said he’s called Sioux Lookout home since 1987.
“Before moving to Sioux Lookout I was living in Sault Ste. Marie… I got to the point where I needed a change of scenery. My brother, who was living in Sioux Lookout at the time, invited me up for a long weekend. I never left,” he said.
This year’s imagineNATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival ran from Oct. 22 to 27. Their website reads, “The imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, is the world’s largest festival showcasing film, video, audio, and digital + interactive media made by Indigenous screen-content creators. For 20 years, the Festival has presented compelling and distinctive works from Canada and around the globe, reflecting the diversity of Indigenous nations and illustrating the vitality and dynamism of Indigenous arts, perspectives, and cultures in contemporary media.”