Jennifer Dysart

Jennifer Dysart is an archive enthusiast with a deep love of found footage and experimental filmmaking. Jennifer Dysart was an Artist-In-Residence for Archive/Counter-Archive at Library and Archives Canada (2019) and presented Revisiting Keewatin at Nuit Blanche at York University in 2022. Her films Caribou in the Archive (2019), Kewekapawetan: Return After the Flood (2014) and Moss Origins (2011) have screened around the world. In 2014, Jennifer won the MFA thesis prize at York University. Her film projects aim to bring awareness of the importance of archives in the creation of memory while also representing a growing body of work that prioritizes ethical research and interrupts the power of colonial archives. In 2022, Jennifer released a new work called Brimming that considers the role that archives play in silencing the history of environmental disasters. Brimming was made for the Archives of Resistance Project curated by soJin Chun. She was born in Alberta, raised in BC, currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario and has Cree Indigeous roots on her Dad's side from South Indian Lake in northern Manitoba, Canada. In 2008, when Jennifer Dysart was working on her master's thesis in Film Production at York University in Toronto, Canada, she discovered approximately 2 hours of footage showing her father's northern Cree community called O'Pipon Na Piwin Cree Nation/ South Indian Lake, Manitoba. The footage documents the moment in 1968 when Manitoba Hydro representatives revealed the plan to create a major hydro-electric project that would flood the lake and that ultimately led to the demise of the cultural fabric of the community. The filmmaker was unable to negotiate a reduced rate for the use of the footage with Canada's national broadcaster who held the copyright. Despite this hurdle, she crafted a number of artistic and community-based events to share and spread the profound material within the community. The archival material informed her master's thesis Kewekapawetan: Return After the Flood that won the MFA thesis prize at York University in 2014. Jennifer feels that this experience exemplifies how archives are complicit in the ongoing colonization of Indigenous peoples and she would like to see major changes to how archives of all kinds (government, corporate, private) engage with Indigenous researchers and artists.