Plays, Films and Other Artistic Works
Shirley first gained national attention with Path With No Moccasins. Her directorial debut was with a short film called Silent Tears, which won several film festival awards for Best Short Film and was "screened at the 1998Sundance Film Festival.".
Her first feature film was Backroads, a journey into the harsh contemporary life of Cree women. The movie was financed and executive-produced by Offline Entertainment Group.
Shirley realized that she could "ease a pain or raise an issue with her film work" and so dedicated herself to creating film by enrolling in writing classes, director's labs, acting workshops and film schools
Much of her art is based on biographical elements. Path With No Moccasins gave Shirley the opportunity to "speak about her life and the struggle to retain her identity, and Cree heritage". Silent Tears chronicles the events of a "harsh winter trip with her parents to a northern trap line when she was eight years old".
In order to promote Aboriginal artists, Shirley and Blake Debassige co-own Kasheese Studios art gallery. She is also the president of Spoken Song film production company and founded the Weengushk Film Institute on Manitoulin Island that will train, develop and guide independent filmmakers.
Her artwork is inspired by Woodlands School, which is a concept given birth by Norval Morrisseau. Her art has been exhibited around the world, and her commissions include:
- Christmas cards for UNICEF
- Amnesty International
- The Ontario Native Women's Association
- The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto
Read more about this topic: Shirley Cheechoo
Famous quotes containing the words films, artistic and/or works:
“The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t.”
—Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930)
“I think “taste” is a social concept and not an artistic one. I’m willing to show good taste, if I can, in somebody else’s living room, but our reading life is too short for a writer to be in any way polite. Since his words enter into another’s brain in silence and intimacy, he should be as honest and explicit as we are with ourselves.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)
“Artists, whatever their medium, make selections from the abounding materials of life, and organize these selections into works that are under the control of the artist.... In relation to the inclusiveness and literally endless intricacy of life, art is arbitrary, symbolic and abstracted. That is its value and the source of its own kind of order and coherence.”
—Jane Jacobs (b. 1916)