Terril Calder is a Métis artist, born in Fort Frances, Ontario, Canada currently residing in Toronto. She attended The University of Manitoba's Fine Art Program as a Drawing major with a focus on Performance Art (with Sharen Alward) & Film Studies (with George Toles). Her work has strongly influenced many Indigenous filmmakers and a new generation film; Spotted Fawn aka Amanda Strong and Michelle Latimer were both mentored and/or assisted by Terril in their animated work. Compelled by the love of Hybrid Media and Fusion Art she currently experiments with the amalgamation in her Stop Frame Animated films that she writes, directs, crafts and animates. The films screen Nationally and Internationally and have received attention, most notably an Honorable Mention at The Sundance Film Festival and at Berlinale a Canadian Genie Award Nomination as well as TIFF’s top ten list in 2011 for “Choke” a short she animated and co-created with Michelle Latimer. In 2016 she was awarded the Ontario Arts Council's K.M Hunter award for her work in Media Arts.
Terril is the writer, animator and director of Repercussions, a touching animated film that examines the link aboriginal people have to the Canadian lands history. Join us on September 30 at 7pm EST for an online screening and livestream talkback with Terril, part of BFF’s Behind the Lens Online Series.
What inspired you to tell this story?
There were three things. #1 I was fascinated with the idea that all of our current cities in Canada were once the sites of Indigenous cities. Beautiful places on the land were always that way and attracted people to gather there. We had our own marketplaces and trading posts that were replaced and we were displaced. I knew this. I just never really visualized it before. #2 I was curious about our physical connection to the earth. When life is overwhelming, planting yourself down on the ground physically tends to ground you emotionally. #3 How grounding yourself in the dirt is seen as degradation by colonial systems and how those systems fail to truly understand people outside of those systems. I imagined trying to change those systems from the inside by learning their ways and making "change" that way. I've lately come around to thinking that we just need to dismantle those systems all together.
Still from Repercussions
What’s the core message that you wanted to convey to your audience through this film?
That it is not us that needs to change, it is those systems that do not understand us.
What is the best advice you received when you were just starting out?
It was in art school and it holds true to this day. It was that everyone has a story to tell. It is your job as an artist not to sympathize and tell a story...Empathy is a greater tool in art. We are experts at our own experience so spend a lifetime trying to unpack that and run your own race. The art that comes out of you is yours and if you try to make art that you admire it's a cheap representation of the original. Don't emulate ideas...incubate, ruminate and create stories that only you can tell and know they have value.
Terril Calder in studio
What are some of the most important ways people can support your work as well as other work by IBPOC women and non-binary artists?
Listen. Lol I want to stop there but I'll expand. I find colonial thinking always lends itself to people wanting to be experts in understanding marginalized groups. They want to drop in and become educated through a film, book, talk with the sheer purpose to somehow be cleansed of their shame of privilege. Therefore they are allies and they can shame others. It’s hierarchical thinking. It's ok to sit in that shame and acknowledge it and to confess that you don't know once in a while. As a person who had to learn their colonial systems I feel it's fair that they sit back and feel uncomfortable and have to learn mine. They can support me by being honest and they can support all of us just by listening.
Who are some of your favourite filmmakers both emerging and established and/or some work you've been watching recently that you strongly recommend?
I've put my mind to watching every Studio Ghibli film on Netflix during Covid. There is something there for me beyond the beautiful award-winning work. I'm drawn to how the culture is integrated into the story without there being a manufactured set agenda. Lately, I find there is a real push from the non-Indigenous film industry for our films to be educational and to unpack our sacred stories and traditions. This request fortifies the need for Indigenous stories to live in a box....that Cowboys and Indians box..they just want us to write the Westerns to fortify the stereotypes. However, our films like the ones from Studio Ghibli can have themes about what it means to be a human from an Indigenous perspective without falling into racist tropes. I am transported into a different culture and worlds filled with magic and awe. I feel a little altered after watching some of my faves: Spirited Away and Howl's Moving Castle.
Catch REPERCUSSIONS as part of BFF’s Behind the Lens Online Screening & Talkback series, screening September 28-30. Join us on Tuesday, September 29th at 7pm EST for a livestream talkback with Terril. Register FREE here.