So Surreal Behind The Masks

Sunday March 9 @ 7 pm

Preceded by təm kʷaθ nan Namesake teaser

1 hr 28 min – Documentary
Not Rated

Neil Diamond is a Cree filmmaker, who made a huge impact with Reel Injun, a documentary about the negative “Indian” stereotypes that so permeate Western society that even the filmmaker as a child wanted to be a cowboy, not himself, when playing with friends. Reel Injun won three Gemini Awards including for best director and went on to win a Peabody Award. His new film So Surreal: Behind the Masks, co-directed by Joanne Robertson, explores the strange but intense relationship between Surrealism and the masks of the Yup’ik ‘and Kwakwaka’wakw nations and how that commingling came to pass. It’s about cultural appropriation, art and dream imagery.

The documentary traces the storied journey of Indigenous masks from the far reaches of Turtle Island into the hands of European Surrealists, influencing the work and worldview of artists and writers like Max Ernst, André Breton, Roberto Matta and Joan Miró – all while following the dramatic quest to return a mask that was brutally stolen from the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw people on Canada’s northwest coast over a century ago. Part caper, part road trip, part spiritual journey, the film follows Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond (Reel Injun) as he travels coast-to-coast and across the Atlantic and back, gradually piecing together this global story of influence, reconnection and restitution.

“Repatriation is a complex beast,” the Cree Canadian film-maker muses, in his own voiceover. The settler government in Northern Turtle Island banning potlatching for seventy years had consequences. One of these consequences includes the theft of artworks from Indigenous people living in the Northwest. Repatriating these objects has been difficult work but one must consider the complexity of recent history. Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson’s So Surreal: Behind the Masks examines a history with multiple beginnings. One of these beginnings is a Yu’pik mask that sold for prices comparable to settler art.

Competing claims of ownership and affinity are not easy to untangle—repatriation really is a complex beast!—but the film engages directly with a fairly unambiguous case. Barbara Duthuit, a socialite, trustee of the Baltimore Museum of Art and the widow of the son of the Surrealist critic Georges Duthuit, owns the raven transformation mask that was taken by the Canadian government, bought and admired by her late father-in-law, and is earnestly sought back by Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw people trying to keep their heritage alive. (As is explained, successful repatriations can take the form of a gift, anonymous or with a tribal ceremony honoring the Western donor, a brokered sale to a tribal ally followed by a donation or a long-term loan.) The efforts of Diamond, Ellis and the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw to reach Duthuit and get a response give the film its most urgent through-line, and prompt viewers accustomed to the Western Museum style of canon-building and exhibition to consider what else stewardship might look like.

“There’s a spiritual connection to these objects that were taken away and put in museums, and it’s important for people to know what happened,” Diamond says. “It’s not just native history, it’s settler history, too, and people deserve to have these objects returned because they’re part of their being.”