First Stories - ati-wîcahsin (It's Getting Easier)
2007 · 6m · Canada
Directed by Tessa Desnomie
Genres: biography, documentary, family
Tones: contemplative, tender
Woodlands Cree elder Jane Merasty, born and raised on the trapline, looks back over eighty vigorous years of change. Her granddaughter Tessa Desnomie celebrates her life and times.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Look, intergenerational oral history *could* be the most boring documentary subgenre alive, but Desnomie's choice to let Merasty's voice and presence completely dominate six minutes—no archival B-roll crutches, no moody soundtrack manipulation—is weirdly radical in how it refuses to aestheticize indigeneity for white audiences.
A formally austere portrait that understands the power of restraint: the film trusts Merasty's eighty years of lived authority to carry the weight, situating itself in a lineage of intimate biographical documentary that values witness over spectacle, and Desnomie's directorial choice to step aside entirely becomes the most generous act of craft.
The decision to shoot this as essentially a single-camera conversation—letting the frame hold on Merasty's face, trusting her rhythm and pauses rather than cutting away—transforms what could be archival obligation into something luminous; that one structural commitment makes the whole thing breathe.