On a sweltering 40-degree summer day, Chuna McIntyre, a Yup’ik storyteller and dancer, is dressed in full regalia and performs a traditional song and dance inside the Louvre Museum, accompanied by the rhythmic beat of his hand drum.
He is honouring a Yup’ik mask with his dance, offering a traditional greeting to the mask that once belonged to his family’s village in southwest Alaska and is now on display at the museum.
In So Surreal: Behind the Masks, co-director and leading character, Neil Diamond sets out to better understand the journey of an Indigenous mask, once owned by a surrealist artist, that appears at a high-end art fair.
Co-directed with Joanne Robertson, what quickly unfolds like a detective story takes the filmmakers from New York City to Alaska, British Columbia and France, shedding light on not only Canada’s racist policies that forced the confiscation and displacement of many of these cultural items but also the art world’s treatment of these pieces.
Many Indigenous masks are now part of the diaspora, far removed from their original homes and contexts, owned by private collectors and on display in foreign museums.
“For a Yup’ik person and Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw people, they’re not just art objects,” says Robertson. “There’s a spiritual connection to them, and I think it was important to show that.”
The Yup’ik and Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw are completely different cultures and thus view and treat their masks differently.
“The Yup’ik would burn them after a ceremony, and I think they had more of a spiritual connection to them,” says Diamond. “It was only the shamans who would wear them and who would perform the ceremony.” In wearing the mask, the shaman is telling the story of what he saw in the spirit world, and then bringing the message back to the community.
For the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw, the mask serves more like an archive and history lesson, a reminder of where a family comes from, explains Diamond.
The surrealists’ connection, much like the Yup’ik, was spiritual and visceral. Diamond explains that the masks hold power, noting that one surrealist would actually have conversations with a mask hanging in his living room.
The museum’s connection is more anthropological. The masks are placed behind glass, where no one can touch or engage with them. In these settings, the masks are “imprisoned.”
In making the documentary, Diamond and Robertson filmed in many museums since 2019, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Museum of Anthropology and the Museum of Vancouver.
Each museum and community had its own set of restrictions that needed to be adhered to and respected in order to document and film the cultural items.
Robertson explains that they had to be very careful in honouring what was being filmed, which required being in close contact with the Indigenous community, whether it was McIntyre in Yup’ik territory or the Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw people from U’mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay.
“It takes a lot of relationship building,” says Robertson. “In some cases, we had to be really clear about what we were allowed to shoot, what we weren’t allowed to shoot, particularly in Vancouver more so than in New York or in Paris.”
Although facing many challenges, Indigenous communities are trying to repatriate their cultural items by creating relationships and conversations in hopes of finding and having them returned. But, as Diamond says in the film, repatriation is a complex beast.
“In terms of getting a mask back from a private collection, it’s really tough,” says Robertson.
Even if a mask is located, it is likely owned by an art collector. There isn’t necessarily an energy connection but more of a financial connection, explains Robertson. Further, Indigenous masks, once acquired by surrealists like André Breton and used as inspiration for Surrealist art, have now become part of France’s cultural patrimony.
This is ironic given that many of these masks were confiscated after ‘illegal’ potlatches were held in defiance of Canada’s ban on the ceremony between 1885 and 1951.
While many pieces have since been reclaimed, others remain abroad and in private ownership, as documented in the film with the Raven Transformation Mask.
The collaboration between Robertson and Diamond is even more significant in this context. Robertson, a settler who grew up on Squamish territory, feels privileged to collaborate with Diamond on So Surreal. They’ve worked together in the past, most recently on “Red Fever,” but as early as the late 1990s when they collaborated on telling mostly Cree stories.
The collaboration represents a step towards reconciliation. “This is not just a native story, it’s a settler story too,” says Diamond.
So Surreal: Behind the Masks had its world premiere at TIFF Docs 2024 on September 10 and will have its Canadian broadcast premiere on documentary Channel in the 2024/25 season.
