This moving-image and sound performance remixes promotional films from the 1920’s to the 70’s that advertised the Canadian wilderness as a holiday destination.

These films’ commercial objectives and spectacular views lie on the surface of an ideology of modernity and power. They reflect a collective need for control over the land and the First Peoples connected to it. Through the recombination of images, music and narration in a two-screen projection, Holiday Native Land explores the colonial unconscious lurking in these enchanting landscapes, uncovering mythology that orders and divides nature and culture, Canada and Indigenous people, man and woman, progress and history.

Warning: some of the archival films contain outdated depictions and language related to Indigenous people.

45 min + Q&A

Nicolas Renaud is a filmmaker, installation artist, and Assistant Professor in First Peoples Studies at Concordia University in Montréal. The film Brave New River earned him the award for best 1st Canadian feature-length documentary at Hot Docs 2013. He is of mixed Indigenous and Québécois heritage and is a member of the Huron-Wendat First Nation of Wendake.

Brian Virostek is an experimental filmmaker, performer, and film conservator. He attended BealArt in his hometown of London, Ontario, and obtained an MFA in studio arts at Concordia University in Montreal. His films have screened at the Images Film Festival in Toronto and Fracto in Berlin. He works as an archivist for Library and Archives Canada