Marie Clements' 'Reclaim My Skin' Premieres at VIFF — SkimNews
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- Marie Clements brings her three-part musical documentary series "Reclaim My Skin" to VIFF on Oct. 10, exploring how colonization stripped Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people of power and how they're reclaiming their voices through activism, politics, and the arts.
- The screening comes three days after Clements won a top prize at VIFF for her feature "Where We Stand," making the new series her second concurrent presence at the festival.
- The series grew out of conversations with musician and composer Pura Fé, whose performance is featured, and uses "story songs" — a cinematic-meets-musical technique Clements first developed in her earlier music documentary "The Road Forward."
- A standout interview pairs Clements and Gloria Steinem with Indigenous activists Louise Wakerahkats:te Herne and Michelle Schenandoah in New York, surfacing what Clements calls a lesser-known historical link between Indigenous women's political structures and early feminism.
- Clements argues that Indigenous women held positions of social, political, and spiritual power before colonization, and credits early conversations between Indigenous women and white suffragettes — particularly in the eastern U.S. — with shaping the feminist movement's trajectory.
- Clements calls this period a "Renaissance time for Indigenous filmmakers," citing increasing representation on both sides of the camera, while cautioning that sustained support is essential for the momentum to continue.
- Influenced by James Baldwin, Clements frames the audience's role as "witness" — positioning the documentary as a dialogue between artists and viewers about power, colonization, and its continuing present-day effects on Indigenous families.
Why it matters: Clements is leveraging back-to-back VIFF appearances to amplify a historiographical claim — that Indigenous women held pre-colonial power and influenced early feminism — that mainstream feminist narratives have historically overlooked. By premiering a three-part musical documentary during what she calls a "Renaissance" for Indigenous filmmakers, she's contributing both art and counter-history at a moment when distribution support remains the bottleneck she herself flags.
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