Wilfred Buck: Documentary Screening

The UWinnipeg Physics department and Winnipeg Institute of Theoretical Physics is proud to present a screening of Wilfred Buck.

Moving between earth and stars, past and present, this hybrid feature documentary – winner of Best Canadian Documentary at the Calgary International Film Festival – follows the extraordinary life of Wilfred Buck, a charismatic and irreverent Cree Elder who overcame a harrowing yet familiar history of displacement, racism and addiction by reclaiming ancestral star knowledge and ceremony.

Buck is humble, profound, funny, always real and a master storyteller. Narration taken from his autobiography condenses the loss and pain of his youth into powerful, Beat-like poetry. After his community in Northern Manitoba is forcibly relocated to make way for a hydroelectric dam, Buck’s family loses everything. He descends into the darkness of the city streets, surviving any way he can, until he reconnects with Elders who start him on a path that transforms his world. Driven by insatiable curiosity and instructed by dreams, Buck becomes a science educator and internationally respected star lore expert. His mission is sharing these life-changing teachings—as relevant and urgent today as ever—always guided by ceremony and anchored in the land.

Directed by Lisa Jackson. Access provided by the Canadian Astronomical Society.

For more information on the screening, contact Evan McDonough.