Description
Four Faces of the Moon is a book by Métis filmmaker, illustrator, media artist, and stop-motion director Amanda Strong and with an afterword by Dr. Sherry Farrell-Racette, a Métis scholar. In Four Faces of the Moon, Spotted Fawn, who is on a journey to uncover her family’s story, travels through time and space to reclaim connection to ancestors, language, and the land. In the dreamworld she bears witness to a mountain of buffalo skulls. They stand as a ghostly monument to the slaughter of the Plains bison to near extinction. On this path, Spotted Fawn knows she must travel through her own family history to confront the harsh realities of the past and reignite her connection to her people and the land. Her darkroom becomes a portal, and her photographs allow her glimpses into the lives of her relatives over the course of four chapters of this book, which follow the phases of the moon. Time and space become unlocked and unfurl in front of her eyes. Guided by her ancestors, Spotted Fawn’s travels through the past allow her to come into full face, like the moon itself. Four Faces of the Moon is adapted from the acclaimed stop-motion animated film of the same name, written and directed by Amanda Strong. Four Faces of the Moon brings the oral and written history of the Michif, Cree, Nakoda and Anishinaabe Peoples and their cultural link to the buffalo alive on the page. The video of this story produced by Amanda Strong is available at: https://vimeo.com/248095181