Jeff Barnaby, the Indigenous genre filmmaker whose most recent film Blood Quantum won seven Canadian Screen Awards, has died following a year-long battle with cancer. He was 46.
Barnaby was born and raised on the Mi’gmaq community of Listuguj and spent his adult life living in Montreal, Quebec. Inspired by David Cronenberg’s Rabid and other films he watched in his youth such as Conan The Barbarian, Blade Runner, Predator, and the Quebecois classic Léolo, he went on to attend Dawson College and Concordia University’s cinema programme.
Barnaby’s work was rooted in his experience growing up in Gespe’gewa’gi and he wrote, directed, and edited all his films, starting with his debut short film in 2004, From Cherry English, which premiered at Sundance Film Festival. Next came The Colony in 2007, which premiered at TIFF and was later selected as one of TIFF’s Top Ten films of the year.
File Under Miscellaneous in 2010 won several prizes including the Best Indigenous Language Production Jury prize from ImagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival and was followed in 2015 by Etlinisigu’niet (Bleed Down) supported by National Film Board Of Canada.
Debut feature Rhymes For Young Ghouls in 2013 offered a scathing indictment of Canada’s Residential School system wrapped in a revenge story set on the fictitious Red Crow reserve. The film won Best Canadian First Feature at VIFF and inspired a new generation of Indigenous filmmakers.
It launched the career of Kawennáhere Devery Jacobs (Reservation Dogs, Echo), who said, “Beautifully stubborn ’til the very end, Jeff Barnaby was bold in his life and his work. He bore a sensitivity, poignancy and depth within him, that translated through his films and resonated with audiences Indigenous and non-Native alike. Jeff had an ineffable impact on my life. I wouldn’t be an actor today, if it weren’t for Jeff. Having nearly given up on this career, he not only took a chance on me, but fought relentlessly to cast me in his debut feature Rhymes For Young Ghouls, my first leading role. We were bound and forever changed from that experience, and formed a special connection of understanding, respect and longstanding friendship.”
Barnaby’s second feature Blood Quantum in 2019 was a zombie film which critiqued colonialism. Inspired by John Carpenter, George Romero, and Alanis Obomoswain’s Incident At Restigouche, its central conceit was that Indigenous people were immune to the zombie plague. Blood Quantum played in TIFF Midnight Madness and XYZ Films licensed it to more than 30 territories. When COvid thwarted theatrical distribution plans, it pivoted to a streaming release.
The filmmaker strived to highlight the cosmology of the Mi’gmaq language in his body of work and said in a recent interview, “In Mi’gmaq the word for ancestor and parent is the same thing, ungi’gul. Your language, your land, and your elders are time capsules as much as they are cultural touchstones. As an indigenous person you exist to move your culture forward from the past into the present to insure its survival for the future. And whereas the inherited trauma can inform the theme, experiencing time as a singularity effects structure, the indigenous narrative exists all at once because we are living, breathing history.”
Friend and producer John Christou said, “Jeff Barnaby’s films changed Canada, and played an outsized role in advancing the cultural and political imperative to reconcile with Indigenous peoples. His mastery of the craft, his storytelling, his uncompromising vision, and his humanity, shine through his work. My greatest hope is that the next generation of Indigenous filmmakers will pick up the torch and honour his legacy by being equally uncompromising in the realization of their vision. The film industry has lost a visionary and unique voice, but more importantly, many of us have lost a friend.”
Barnaby is survived by his wife Sarah Del Seronde and son Miles.
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