Second Stories - Deb-we-win Ge-ken-am-aan, Our Place in the Circle
2008 · 22m · Canada
Directed by Lorne Olson
Genres: documentary, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Filmmaker Lorne Olson recalls a vision of two-spirit people dancing and laughing, which sends him searching for strength in ancestral traditions. His buoyant journey connects that image to challenges faced by two-spirit people in the present.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects a two-spirit documentary to be solemn testimony, so Olson pulls the rug by leading with *joy*—a vision of dancing and laughing—then uses that tonal anchor to reframe ancestral practice as radical pleasure, not just survival. It's a move that should feel gimmicky but doesn't, because he commits to the whimsy without winking.
The film sits thoughtfully in the lineage of first-person Indigenous cinema, particularly the NFB's own tradition of personal essay-docs, and Olson's formal restraint—letting the vision breathe, refusing to overexplain the connection between ancestral memory and contemporary struggle—demonstrates the kind of considered narrative architecture that resists easy resolution.
The single decision to begin with that buoyant, almost fantastical image of dancing two-spirit people rather than diving into present-day hardship reframes the entire emotional logic of the film, making ancestral knowledge feel like an active force rather than a nostalgic object—and that tonal inversion, sustained across 22 minutes on what must be a modest budget, is what makes this work.