A cartoon in Blackfoot is getting a world premiere.
Celestine Twigg is a teacher from Fort Macleod who teaches the Blackfoot language at the Piikani Nation Secondary School, and she’s hoping to teach people the Blackfoot language through cartoons, similar to Sesame Street.
She recently created and released a cartoon called POOS, which means cat in Blackfoot, and it does just that.
POOS is a personal story that shows the daily life of Twigg’s cat Thumper.
It’s narrated by Twigg’s late son Troy Emery Twigg in the Blackfoot language.
In the cartoon, the cat Thumper falls asleep after a busy morning and dreams about the Blackfoot culture, as well as their stories and philosophy, which are narrated by Harrison Red Crow who is a language keeper.
This cartoon adds to the success of the Blackfoot Language Animation Project (BLAP), which was produced from 2020-2023 under Twigg’s guidance.
As a result of the BLAP, there were over 100 short cartoons created that showcased different nouns and concepts while being narrated in the Blackfoot language.
Those short cartoons were created by students in Fort Macleod and animators from around the world.
Twigg had been wanting to try directing a longer cartoon, so she worked with the Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS) Artistic Director Xstine Cook, who is an award-winning filmmaker and created a team to create POOS.
“I thought animation would make it easier and more fun to learn our language so more people will be able to learn and revive it,” Twigg had said in a media release on September 18th.
The narrator, Emery Twigg was a founding member of Calgary’s Making Treaty 7 theatre company, and creator of Iniskim: Return of the Buffalo, which is a mask and puppet project that was featured in a documentary that had been screened at the Calgary International Film Festival.
Emery Twigg passed away on August 30th, 2023, and POOS is dedicated to his memory.
POOS will be getting a world premiere at the Calgary International Film Festival on September 23rd as part of the Shorts: Alberta Spirit category.
The cartoon will also be screened at the New West Film Fest in New Westminster, B.C. in October, as well as the Red Nation International Film Festival in Los Angeles in November.
To find screening times and tickets for POOS at the Calgary Film Festival, click here.
