Asinabka Film & Media Arts Festival

Asinabka Film & Media Arts Festival Celebrating Indigenous Arts in Algonquin Territory Ottawa • Canada • Sept. 15-19, 2021 • Online Asinabka Festival is a registered non-profit organization, and was first organized by an ad-hoc collective of Indigenous artists and arts professionals who came together in 2012 to launch the first edition of the festival. We began this project out of a strong need for a space in Ottawa to showcase film, video, and media arts created by Indigenous peoples. Our curatorial focus is to centre the programming of work by Indigenous peoples, as well as the work of local artists, and emerging artists. The mandate of the Asinabka Festival is to hold an annual Indigenous film and media arts festival in Ottawa, Canada, that allows independent artists, national, international, Indigenous, and non-Indigenous, to share, present, and disseminate their work. In addition to the annual festival, Asinabka Festival offers year round programming, such as our winter "Snow-screening" in an outdoor theatre made of snow, as well as other one-time screenings and art events. The Asinabka Festival's goals are: • to highlight works that examine Indigenous issues and topics • to support media artists and filmmakers • to promote Indigenous cultures and languages • to educate people about First Nations, Métis, and Inuit issues in Canada, and about Indigenous issues internationally • to provide a space where Indigenous peoples can tell their own stories and see their own cultures reflected back at them • to entertain, to be innovative, and to present the best in Indigenous film and arts.