Event Details - Canadian Studies Film Series: BEANS

The Canadian Studies Film Series presents BEANS, directed by Mohawk-Canadian filmmaker Tracey Deer, on Tuesday, November 29, from 5-7pm in the Maxwell Library Heritage Room.

"For 78 days in the summer of 1990, two indigenous Mohawk communities in Quebec protested against a proposed golf course expansion and condominium development that would decimate a forest and an ancestral burial ground. While it began as a peaceful protest, it didn’t take long for the city of Oka’s mayor to bring in armed forces, citing alleged criminal activity. 

"Tracey Deer’s narrative feature debut Beans finds a perfect way into this period of history: a twelve-year-old Mohawk girl [played by Kiawentiio] who goes by the nickname of Beans. Beans and her younger sister Ruby…help their mom and dad bring food and other supplies to the group organizing the standoff behind a barricade, but once there, the standoff explodes into chaos. This triggers something in Beans, and she seeks out local mean girl April in the hopes of learning how to be tough…Kiawentiio carries the film on her shoulders remarkably well, but she’s surrounded by an ensemble that is just as strong.

"…Deer proves herself a talented filmmaker. The film is clearly deeply personal to her, and that shows through the deeply felt screenplay and the well-balanced directing…With Kiawentiio’s sensitive performance at its center, Beans accumulates power as it goes…The coming-of-age beats of the script…are put in sharp relief by the social unrest going on around them. When combined with the visceral child’s eye view of the protests, the film is able to give us a new perspective on both of its story halves." ---Dan Bayer, Next Best Picture