aemi Newsletter: Sky Hopinka Screening + Q&A, Irish Film Institute, Tues Dec 12th 8.30pm

Published date: 19 Dec 2023

Hello there,

We hope this email finds you well as the end of the year is almost upon us… We are writing with details of our final screening of 2023, an event we are thrilled to be presenting in partnership with STEREO EDITIONS, Temple Bar Gallery + Studios and the IFI. Next Tuesday December 12th at 8.30pm we will welcome widely and rightly celebrated artist, writer and filmmaker Sky Hopinka to the IFI to present the Irish premiere of his ethereal 2020 feature debut, maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore. 

Sky is in Dublin this month for the launch of his new collection of poems, The Island Weights, published by the brilliant and partly Dublin-based STEREO EDITIONS. Relating to the four water spirits holding the earth in place, one of many stories in Ho-Chunk cosmology, The Island Weights (Wijirawaséwe) explores language to conjure these beings, seeking direction while wandering through homeland boundaries and bodies of water. This beautiful letterpress limited edition will be launched with our dear friends at Temple Bar Gallery + Studios as part of their very special ‘Polyphonic’ edition of Dublin Art Book Fair this Sunday December 10th at 6pm, tickets here.

We at aemi have long been admirers of Sky’s transcendent work and have screened two of his short films in recent programmes; the deeply affecting Kicking the Clouds from 2021 in which Sky offers a reflection on descendants and ancestors, guided by a 50 year old audio recording of his grandmother learning the Pechanga language from her mother and 2019’s sublime Lore in which images of friends and landscapes are cut, fragmented, and reassembled on an overhead projector as hands guide their shape and construction.

Sky’s overall practice in video, photo and text work considers personal positions of Indigenous homeland and landscape. A Ho-Chunk Nation national and descendent of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians, Hopinka is a teacher of chinuk wawa, a language indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin in which much of maɬni is spoken. Hopinka’s interest in language as a container of culture is much in evidence in maɬni, a film which follows two young parents and friends of the artist – Sweetwater Sahme and Jordan Mercier – as they hike across the mountains of the Pacific Northwest and reflect upon the environment around them, the spirit world and the Chinookan origin-of-death myth. Described by the New York Times as ‘an essential portrait of contemporary Indigenous life’, maɬni lends poetic expression to the urgent need to preserve as well as lament what has already been lost of Indigenous culture.

Spoiled for choice in terms of films of Sky’s we could have shown this month, we elected to go with maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore, a film Sky recently withdrew from The International Documentary Festival Amsterdam programme in solidarity with Palestine after the festival released a statement denouncing the actions of a number of protestors carrying a banner with the slogan ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ at the opening night screening.  During a later conversation event with Jumana Manna, Sky read this public statement by Palestinian filmmaker Basma al-Sharif aloud to the audience. On 13 November, in his own withdrawal statement, Hopinka also expressed his support for IDFA artistic director Orwa Nyrabi, writing, “He’s in an impossible position as the director of the festival, as an Arab, as a Syrian, and as a friend to so many of us.”

It is in the spirit then of aemi’s, and Ireland’s, ongoing solidarity with Palestine that we screen maɬni – towards the ocean, towards the shore this Tuesday, a film we hope can give some time and space to acknowledge our shared experiences, shared experiences that extend always to the vast and unknowable pain of what civilians in Gaza are experiencing right now. And with that in mind we would like to direct you to TBG+S’ Artists’ Fundraiser for Médicins Sans Frontières in aid of Palestine and encourage you to contribute what you can and as much as you can afford at a time when need could not be greater.

all of our best wishes,

Alice Butler and Daniel Fitzpatrick
Twitter | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | YouTube