César's Bark Canoe

Building a canoe solely from the materials that the forest provides may become a lost art, even among the Indigenous Peoples whose traditional craft it is. In this film, Cesar Newashish, a sixty-seven-year-old Atikamekw of the Manowan Reserve north of Montreal, builds a canoe in the old way, using only birch bark, cedar splints, spruce roots and gum. With a sure hand he works methodically to fashion a craft unsurpassed in function or beauty of design. The film is without commentary but text frames appear on the screen in Cree, French and English. Film without words.