Ali Kazimi Canada 1997 56 minutes

A journey full of quiet insights and surprising twists, Shooting Indians begins with Ali Kazimi, a newly arrived student in Canada, unraveling the hidden history of the land he has chosen as his new home.

Kazimi takes interest in the career of his friend and colleague, Iroquois photographer Jeffrey Thomas. Through the work of early American photographer Edward Curtis, Thomas became inspired to examine how Indigenous peoples have been photographed. Woven throughout the film is Kazimi’s exploration of the irony of an Indian from India making a film about a North American Indian. –KO

Ali Kazimi and Jeffrey Thomas are both recipients of the 2019 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Longing and Belonging: 1990s South Asian Film and Video
The 1990s were a time of significant cultural production within Canada’s South Asian arts communities. Influenced by the 1980s Black Arts Movement in Britain, and in opposition to state-sponsored multiculturalism paradigms in Canada, South Asian became a generous identifier for a variety of communities united by more than geography. Longing and Belonging is loosely structured around themes of diaspora, desire, and identity.

Longing and Belonging is curated by Zool Suleman. Read his essay HERE.