Doc Awards For Local Filmmaker Montour
Written by Jeremy Zafran on 10 November 2021
The Awards are piling up for a Kahnawà:ke filmmaker. Courtney Montour is the writer and director of Mary Two-Axe Early: I Am Indian Again. It’s a documentary on the work of the Kahnawa’kehró:non to eliminate sex based discrimination in the Indian Act in the 1970’s and 80’s.
The doc won the Best Documentary Short award from the American Indian Film Institute festival in San Francisco last weekend. A week after capturing the documentary short award at Imaginative in Toronto:
“It’s really incredible, it’s, you know for me, this movie: Mary Two-Axe Early: I Am Indian Again, was made for First Nation’s audiences, for Indigenous People to know this part of our history. So, to see it being recognized in this way from my peers and from Indigenous festivals, it’s just I think, the most incredible honouring of her legacy.”
Montour says she is quite honoured that her film has touched a nerve:
“It’s been very emotional for a lot of people, I’ve had the chance to attend a few festivals in Edmonton and Vancouver. People have talked to me afterwards to share their personal experiences of being impacted by sex-discrimination in the Indian Act and then being able to regain their status through the work from Mary and other women. I think there’s a lot of personal stories that are coming out, even on social media and yeah, this makes me realize how much this is an on-going issue and people are living this today.”
In-person community screenings are scheduled to begin next month, including in Kahnawà:ke.
