Subversives: Blood Quantum
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2020, 4:00 PM - 5:15 PM (PST) - ONLINE

Presented by the Carsey-Wolf Center.

It is 1981. Beyond the borders of the isolated reservation community of Red Crow, the dead are coming back to life. The only ones who seem immune from the zombie plague are the reservation’s Mi’gmaq residents, who find themselves forced to ward off the ravenous, non-Native hordes. In this subversive and timely take on the zombie flick, writer/director Jeff Barnaby turns historical and popular narratives of contagion on their heads. With plenty of gumption and gore, Blood Quantum confronts the violent—and very much unfinished—history of Canadian settler-colonialism, striking at the disastrous legacy of colonial “blood quantum” laws.

In this virtual event, writer/director Jeff Barnaby joins Métis public intellectual, writer, and educator Chelsea Vowel, author of Indigenous Writes: A Guide to First Nations, Métis & Inuit Issues in Canada, and moderator Tyler Morgenstern (Film and Media Studies, UCSB) for a discussion of Blood Quantum. 

Blood Quantum can be streamed on Shudder. The first 150 guests to register for this webinar will receive a link to an online screener for the film two days prior to the event.

Part of the CWC Presents series.

This virtual event will take place on Zoom. The event is free but prior registration is required.

This event is co-sponsored by the Carsey-Wolf Center, the UCSB American Indian and Indigenous Studies Student Association, the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Collective Research Focus Group at the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, the Las Maestras Center for Xicana[x] Indigenous Thought, Art and Social Practice, and the Walter H. Capps Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion and Public Life.

Subversives
Throughout film history and across the globe, mediamakers have resisted social conventions and attracted the ire of governments and censorship boards. The Carsey-Wolf Center’s fall 2020 and winter 2021 screening series will showcase films and TV shows considered politically, socially, culturally, and ideologically subversive. From mischievous caricatures to biting social critiques, the events in this series invite discussion of the efficacy of subversion and the historical contexts that have rendered these works subversive in the first place.