Tracey Deer
Tracey Deer, a Mohawk from the community of Kahnawake, obtained her bachelor's degree in Film Studies from the Ivy League Dartmouth College in 2000, graduating with two awards of excellence. Immediately afterward, she began working for CanWest Broadcasting's nightly news program in Montreal.
Four months later she joined Rezolution Pictures, also out of Montreal, as a production assistant on a feature-length documentary they had just begun. Within three months she was promoted to co-director and co-DOP of One More River, a 96-minute process documentary that followed the emotional and political turmoil involved within the Cree Nation when they signed a new deal to allow more hydroelectric damming on their land. The film won the Best Documentary Award at the Rendez-vous des Cinema Quebecois in Feb. 2005 and was nominated for the Donald Brittain Best Social/Political Documentary at the Geminis. The film was broadcast on APTN in March 2005.
Her second film, Mohawk Girls, a 63-minute process documentary, was a solo effort that she directed, filmed and wrote about the lives of three Mohawk teenagers growing up on the Kahnawake reserve, which was co-produced with Rezolution Pictures and the National Film Board. It won the Alanis Obomsawin Best Documentary Award at the Imaginenative Film Festival in 2005 and aired on APTN in February 2006.
Her latest projects are a feature documentary examining the concept of modern Native identity, co-directing a feature documentary about the Mohawk immersion elementary school in Akwesasne, and two short fiction films that her production company, Mohawk Princess Pictures, is presently developing.
