Echoes in the Flowing Frame

Stories unfold in time, yet they also stretch beyond it. They double back on themselves, pressing against the edges of memory and imagination. Documentary, nonfiction, or experimental cinema, whatever you want to call it, does not simply record what happens; it disrupts, reframes, and expands the ways we understand history and presence, voice and form. It is not a static reflection of reality. Instead, it’s an ongoing negotiation between what is seen, what is said, what is heard, and what remains. The documentary work that speaks to me, especially in its more experimental and self-aware forms, refuses containment, slipping between observation and participation, between past and future, between the dreamer and the dream.

For me, the films that exemplify that slippage span decades and speak to the constantly evolving shape of the genre. The Exiles (1961), As Long as the Rivers Run (1971), Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993), and INAATE/SE/ (2016) are films that do more than document; they alter the form itself, reshaping it to reflect the desires, realities, and creative visions of the communities they emerge from. Scaffolded upon each other, they offer a conversation that can help us understand where we are going and where we have been.

In As Long as the Rivers Run, the Columbia River is both a setting and a witness to the struggles it documents and shares. This 1971 film, directed by Carol M. Burns, focuses on the fight for fishing rights central to tribes in Washington State. It is a film of its time, one of the earliest that I’ve found that looks at tribes outside of the Plains or major cities and the issues they face that are unique to their lands. The rivers, laden with history, become a character in their own right—a site of survival, conflict, and memory. Yet the distance between the filmmakers and their subjects is apparent, with the lens shaped by perspectives external to the community. As much as the film amplifies the injustice faced by these tribes, its framing reminds us of how crucial it is for these communities to tell their own stories. Still, this was a film that offered insight into this struggle, to a viewership that may never before have seen the plight of contemporaneous Indigenous peoples.

Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance offers a shift in the dynamic of subject and author. Directed by Alanis Obomsawin, this film is embedded in the story it tells. Documenting the 1990 Oka Crisis—a standoff between the Mohawk Nation and Canadian authorities—Obomsawin’s work is as much a participant in the movement as it is an observer. The film refuses a typical narrative. Faces are held in moments of fear, defiance, and exhaustion. Tensions linger in the air, not just between the Mohawk protesters and the state, but also within the larger fabric of what it means to resist. Obomsawin’s presence behind the camera does not impose; it collaborates. Her voice guides the viewer through the geographies of the land and the people and the histories they share, and her physical presence in front of the camera underscores a position of urgency rather than one of performative objectivity. This is a film of solidarity and reclamation, where the act of documenting becomes an extension of the struggle itself. The intimacy of Kanehsatake transforms the documentary from a genre of record to a tool of resistance.

INAATE/SE/ takes the evolution further, breaking apart the traditional documentary framework entirely. Directed by Adam Khalil and Zack Khalil, the film threads the Seven Fires Prophecy of the Anishinaabe into a nonlinear exploration of history and futurity. There is no single narrative here; instead, INAATE/SE/ offers a layered composition of archival footage, reenactments, and experimental imagery. The film refuses the simplicity of explaining or resolving—it is not a history lesson, nor does it aspire to be. Instead, it is an experience that moves with the fluidity of the stories it tells. The Khalil brothers construct a documentary as alive and shifting as the prophecies it examines, inviting viewers to dwell in its ambiguity and to question their expectations of truth and form. INAATE/SE/ shows us this form not as an endpoint, but as a process—a space for imagining futures as much as reflecting on pasts.

Outside of and just as much a part of this chronology is The Exiles, a film that fictionally captures a single night in the lives of Native peoples in Los Angeles. Directed by non-Native Kent Mackenzie in 1961 and restored and finally released decades later in the late 2000s, its quasi-vérité style conveys an immediacy that feels both intimate and detached. The urban sprawl of Los Angeles, with its neon lights and restless energy, mirrors the disconnection and longing of its subjects. Yet Mackenzie’s lens cannot escape its outsider gaze, though the compositions are beautiful and striking. The film offers a window into lives often ignored in the time of the Indian Relocation Act, part of the government’s Indian Termination Policy. The subjects in the film had a part in writing the script and ostensibly played themselves, enacting a typified night in their lives. Its haunting portrayal of urban Native life resonates today, offering a precursor to ongoing discussions of representation and cultural survival, as well as the simple and complicated joys engendered in a diasporic and dislocated community.

What unites these films is their relentless innovation. Each pushes the boundaries of the documentary form, embedding the voices and perspectives of marginalized communities into their very structure. They are not merely about their subjects; they are collaborations, disruptions, and reimaginings of how stories can be told. In Kanehsatake, Obomsawin’s presence becomes part of the narrative—a guiding voice that amplifies rather than overshadows. INAATE/SE/ dismantles linearity, creating a kaleidoscope of impressions that reflect the complexity of Indigenous experiences. As Long as the Rivers Run hints at the possibilities of a genre that listens more deeply, even as it struggles with the constraints of its perspective, especially considering the time in which it was made. And The Exiles, through its restoration and introduction into this nascent canon, forces us to confront how stories evolve over time, shaped by the contexts in which they are viewed.

Water flows through these films—not as a mere symbol but as a force that connects and disrupts. The rivers of the Pacific Northwest in As Long as the Rivers Run are both of sustenance and struggle. In INAATE/SE/, the waterways of Anishinaabe lands ripple with echoes of prophecy. In Kanehsatake, the contested land is haunted by the rivers it has lost. Yet, in The Exiles, the absence of water in the urban sprawl reflects the slow painful process of relocation—a loss that stretches, dilates, and lingers in its emptiness. You feel the diasporic flow of the ebbs and tides of Natives leaving the reservation for the city, and returning when the money ran out or the promises of work dried up. Water becomes more than an element; it is an active participant in these narratives, carrying histories of survival and transformation.

The persistence of community and the refusal to be erased are also a vessel in these diegetic seas. These films do not flatten their subjects into tropes or artifacts. They expand, demand, and complicate—insisting on the depth and specificity of lives shaped by history, resistance, and creativity. They ask the viewer to reckon with the act of watching, to move beyond passive consumption and into a space of engagement. These are not stories told for closure; they are told to provoke, to challenge, to transform—not just the subjects, but also the audience and the form itself. To challenge this genre is not to discard its traditions, but all in service of moving it forward—to create something new that reflects the needs, passions, and visions of the communities they represent. This is an evolution, one that prioritizes the lived experience of those too often spoken for rather than listened to. These films insist that we hear, that we see, that we remember—remember the when and the then, the now and this moment, the context and struggle, and the simple joys we can’t comprehend anymore. Eventually we’ll find a way and a time to fit ourselves into some future’s past, another ripple among ripples folded into the flowing waters on a recurrent journey, like the rain from the clouds into the mountains into the rivers to the sea.