Carlos Ferrand (6)
Carlos Ferrand
Born in Lima, Peru, in 1946, Carlos Ferrand is one of the most prolific Latinx-Canadian filmmakers who ever worked with the NFB. In 1971, he joined Peru’s Gobierno Revolucionario de la Fuerza Armada (Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces), which implemented radical national reforms that had a profound impact on the country. He directed five films between 1971 and 1973 that depicted the processes and results of the government’s agrarian reform program. In 1972, he founded the Grupo cine Liberación sin Rodeos alongside Marcela Robles, Raúl Gallegos and Pedro Neira, and made a series of about a dozen short films (1973–1976) that portrayed the life and experiences of the Andean, Amazonian and Afro-Peruvian peoples. Everything came to an end with a change in Peru’s government, and much of the material he shot was incinerated.
Ferrand was forced into exile, but he brought with him to Canada reels of the film he was working on at the time, Cimarrones. The Black History Society of Quebec urged the NFB to secure copies of this dramatic short: “for we feel that other organizations such as ours—concerned with history of education—would be interested in viewing it.” The quality and substance of Cimarrones opened the NFB’s doors for Ferrand. Since then, the director has worked on 22 NFB films, including six as director: Greetings: Te'skennongweronne – Yves Sioui Durand (2017); People of the Ice (2003, co-director); The Man Who Talks with Wolves (2001); Shadow Chasers (2000, co-director); Kwekànamad – The Wind Is Changing (1999); and Cuervo (1990).
Independently of the NFB, Ferrand has directed dozens of films that have been shown in academic settings and film festivals around the world, including Americano (2007) and 13, A Ludodrama About Walter Benjamin (2016). Recently, he’s been the subject of many tributes and honours across the globe, e.g., a permanent exhibition of some of his photography work at the prestigious Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid; a retrospective curated by the Lima Film Festival in 2018 that screened recently found and restored versions of the films he made with Grupo cine Liberación; and the inclusion of a restored version of his film Niños in a retrospective on the roots of Latinx-Canadian filmmakers, presented at the first National Gathering of Latin Canadian Filmmakers in Montreal in 2024.
Photo credit: Serge Clément
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People of the IceCarlos Ferrand & Jean Lemire 2003 52 minThis feature documentary explores the threats of global warming to the Arctic environment that has nurtured the Inuit for 4,000 years. The Inuit have lived in harmony on this frozen landscape for generations. Today, global warming threatens their habitat. As the ice disappears, so does the Inuit culture it is intimately connected to. Ever-changing temperatures have even made predicting the Arctic climate difficult. Will this extraordinarily resilient people be able to adjust to such dramatic change? -
The Man Who Talks with WolvesCarlos Ferrand 2001 52 minIn the wilderness of northern Quebec, Michel and Louise Pageau devote their lives to caring for injured wild animals and returning them to their natural habitat. Some animals simply cannot make it in the wild any more, so the Pageaus opened a shelter - the Pageau Refuge - for animals that cannot be released.
Michel Pageau has been interested in animals since childhood. A former trapper and hunter, he has a gift for making contact with wild creatures. Pageau feels a particular connection with wolves - and for several years he has maintained a friendship with a number of them, based on mutual trust. Their level of communication is astonishing. When Michel calls, the wolves respond. At one point, Michel is distressed because their rapport seems to have broken down. Ché-Cché, the head of the pack, will not let him approach. Can Michel rebuild their relationship?
With stunning images and poetic narration, The Man Who Talks with Wolves takes us into a mysterious world where the line between human and beast becomes blurred. -
Greetings: Te'skennongweronne - Yves Sioui DurandCarlos Ferrand 2017 4 minIn a space outside of time, Indigenous playwright Yves Sioui Durand encounters the masks that have been created for his plays over a period of more than 30 years. Inhabited by the spirit of the Elders, these faces influence the actors’ every move as they bring to life the memory of the First Peoples of the Americas.
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Shadow ChasersJean Marc Larivière , Carlos Ferrand , … 2000 58 minThis feature-length documentary is a portrait of eclipse chasers, people for whom solar eclipses - among nature's more spectacular phenomena – are a veritable obsession. The film follows 4 of them as they travel incredible distances to witness the last total eclipse of the millennium as it sweeps eastward across Europe to India. At various points along the way enthusiasts Alain Cirou in France, Paul Houde in Austria, Olivier Staiger in Germany and Debasis Sarkar in India offer their impressions of the historic event.
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Kwekànamad - The Wind Is ChangingCarlos Ferrand 1999 54 minAnnie Smith-St-Georges is an Algonquin mother and wife who led a largely uneventful life. Then tragedy struck in 1990, when her teenage son Yanik ended his life. Annie wanted to forget and yet to remember, to understand and yet to deny. Then one day she had a vision of a glass teepee ten storeys high, in Ottawa, to house a National Aboriginal Arts and Performance Centre. The building would be designed by the renowned architect Douglas Cardinal, in memory of her son and for all young Natives struggling to find meaning in life. We meet Annie and her husband eight years later, during the final year of their crusade for the glass teepee. A traditional habitat made from non-traditional material would successfully meld past and present. Annie wishes to give back to her people their ancestral pride and dignity. It's a time of hope. Annie now knows that, and she says it for anyone to hear: "Kwekànamad," the wind is changing. Some subtitles.
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CimarronesCarlos Ferrand 1982 23 min“This powerful, short fiction film recreates events that took place in Peru in the early 1800s, when a group of cimarrones—runaway slaves—attacked a caravan to free friends who’d been sentenced to death. Several of Peru’s vanguard artists of the early 1980s participated in the making of this film. The Afro-Peruvian leader is played by Amador Ballumbrosio, the elder patriarch of the legendary Ballumbrosio family, and the script was co-written by Enrique Verástegui, the iconic Peruvian poet (of African and Chinese descent) who founded the Movimiento Hora Cero. The film’s music was composed by Carlos Hayre, the great Peruvian musicologist who introduced the use of the cajón (box drum) in creole waltzes and Andean harmonies in modern jazz and bossa nova arrangements.
