Finding My Talk: Paul Rickard

Produced and directed by Jeff Bear and Marianne Jones
Urban Rez Productions
24 minutes per part • 2007
Available on VHS and DVD

This accomplished filmmaker has a strong connection to stories from his past and to those that look toward the future. In Aboriginal Architecture, Living Architecture, Paul Rickard showcases indigenous architectural forms, past and present. His series Finding Our Way produced for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network explores communities committed to preserving the languages of their ancestors. Rickard’s first dramatic film, The Winter Chill, portrays two brothers in an isolated northern setting­one embracing traditional values, while the other struggles to understand them.

Rickard is intent on creating positive films that speak about his own culture and the culture of other First Nations communities. Since 2003, he has organized and hosted the Weeneebeg Aboriginal Film and Video Festival in his home community of Moose Factory, Ontario on the southern end of James Bay. He returns there whenever he can, to reconnect with his roots, and heeds the advice his father gave when he first left to go to Montreal and the National Film Board of Canada—remember the stories from home, waiting to be told.

Subject(s): Artists, Filmmaking, Indigenous people