Classic Couple Academy

shalan joundry is an L’nu (Mi’kmaw)/European multi-disciplinary storyteller working in many mediums. She is a poet, playwright, actor, podcast producer, as well as emerging filmmaker. Having worked as a professional oral storyteller for over two decades, shalan has been focused on professional theatre and dance as a writer, director, producer or performer under her company, Nestuita’si Storytelling. shalan lives with her family in their community of L’sitkuk (Bear River First Nation) where she is researching and working on reclaiming her L’nu language.

Her first short film, welima’q, is making its way to film festivals, showing at TIFF 2024 Thursday, September 5, 2024 at 8PM at Scotiabank theatre as part of the Toronto International Film Festival Cuts Programme 01. A meditative short film, welima’q is made from the viewpoint of a sacred plant and creates a deep sense of embodiment with Indigenous tradition. Our filmmaker 5 interview with shalan joudry about the short documentary welima’q follows.

F1: Ecology and nature features prominently in your work. Why sweetgrass as the subject/setting of this film?

I wanted my first film to be about something in nature that i, myself, know intimately. I wanted to show the relationship between land and humans in a beautiful way and how we can “harvest” from nature in a manner that makes us feel part-of, not apart-from the land.

Picking sweetgrass was inspiration for a poem that is in my last book of poetry, but then i started to imagine a short film that shares some of the beauty, sounds and rhythm of sweetgrassing. 

F2: One could describe the film as a sensory experience of heightened sound, mesmerizing sight, action focused on touch and a title translating to “it smells good.” How does this description resonate with your intentions as director?

As a writer and director, my intention was to share what i sense, feel, see and do while i pick sweetgrass. I wanted to weave the elements that could help viewers/listeners almost place themselves on that shore with me. So yes, sensory. And yet what i asked of the cinematographer was to capture this story from the grass’s perspective. I wanted to start and end with the land, “seeing” the humans coming in, being part of the land, giving thanks, and then leaving. It was about the feeling, being there that i wanted to convey. For me, i often spend time on the land in cycles of my own quiet reflection while i let the sounds wash around me, and only every so often share a few words with the other people close by. This is why it was important to have the sound and images specifically help focus attention to those natural elements in this film, for audiences to have a bit of that experience with me.

F3: You’re a scholar in the Mi’kmaw language, and yet the film contains the single spoken word—welima’q. Why this choice?

I am a Mi’kmaw language learner. Rose (who is the woman in the film) and i are learners together. One of the things we do is choose one word and activate it, practice it while we are doing the action that makes sense for that word. We have gone sweetgrassing and practiced that word while smelling the grass, “welima’q” (which means “it smells good“) we say over and over. Then we practice the full word for sweetgrass – welima’ji’jkewe’l. This is also one of the ways that i was conducting my own personal language research as part of my degree in the past year, inspired by the way that Rose and i go about our learning.

I also didn’t feel the need to include more dialogue for this film. As i said, i had wanted to share the sights and sounds that i love when i’m there on the shore. I often get entranced with the grass, listening. I wanted that intimacy conveyed.

F4: This is your first foray into storytelling on film as director, editor and producer. How did this medium stretch you as an artist?

I’m not sure it felt like stretching, as an artist, although that’s a great question. It was simply that i had imagined this as a film and the people who worked on this carried out their skills helping to bring that vision to full fruition with me. What i was stretching was my post-production management, learning about the outputs needed and how to apply to film festivals. Film is the most collaborative and team-dependent medium that i have worked in.

When i first was entering the industry over 20 years ago (doing location audio, then video editing, as well as screenwriting) it was also a bit overwhelming. It can be if you don’t know where and how you fit into the mix. I wasn’t sure how i wanted to express my voice, how i wanted to tell stories and if i was “allowed” to break the mainstream or conventional “rules”, then how to carry out a production to the end. Ashley McKenzie, as a friend and artistic peer, kept telling me that i could try again, and that i was allowed to experiment with how i wanted to work. I’m not sure i would have made this film yet if it weren’t for her encouragement. One of the things that Ashley said was that it would be important to be the director and producer so that i could fully realize my vision my way. I’m glad that i started with this short, taking one moment in my life that i wanted to share with audiences in a “new” medium. It’s incredibly warming to know that many people are already appreciating and connecting with it.

F5: Your work as an artist is about bringing Mi’kmaw stories to a new generation. What is your wish for viewers of welima’q to learn, to take away from their audience experience?

I want audiences to see how beautiful the land is, even though there are massive ecological concerns, that the earth still provides for us. I want audiences to feel the medicinal power of being on the land, to be immersed among the grasses. I want audiences to know that we as Indigenous peoples and our languages are part of the natural world, the landscapes. But then i hope people watching/listening are so inspired that they, too, long for the land.. and then go seek out the pockets of earth to connect with. I believe we, as all humans, need to be part of the land to be well.

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