M étis and Cree filmmaker Barbara Todd Hager (1491: The Untold Story of the Americas Before Columbus) has completed production on a new documentary, Forbidden Music, which has been licensed to B.C. public broadcaster Knowledge Network.

The production saw Hager, along with director of photography Cliff Hokanson and the Acimow production team, traveling to Vienna (Austria), the village of Yalis in the Namgis First Nation, the village T’saxis in northern Vancouver Island, Victoria, Vancouver and Washington, D.C. to uncover the story of an Austrian-born Jewish ethnomusicologist and a Kwakwaka’wakw chief who worked together decades ago to preserve First Nations music.

The documentary was shot in Canada, the U.S. and Austria over 16 days, with the project receiving funding from the Rogers Documentary Fund, the Indigenous Screen Office, the Canada Media Fund, and Film Incentive BC, as well as tax credits. Italy’s Incipit Film SRL licensed the concept for the doc to Hager’s Acimow Media prodco in 2022.

The film explores the story of Dr. Ida Halpern and Kwakwaka’wakw artist and singer Chief Mungo Martin, who recorded hundreds of songs together in Vancouver dating back to 1952. The songs were at risk due to Canada’s Indian Act, which banned First Nations people from gathering, singing and dancing at potlatches. Today the recordings are distributed by the Smithsonian Institution’s Folkways Records, with the original reel-to-reel tapes stored at the BC Archives in Victoria.

“Knowledge Network is proud to be the lead broadcaster on Barbara Todd Hager’s exciting new feature documentary Forbidden Music and to be supporting the team at Acimow Media who have built an all-Indigenous key creative team and are working closely with Kwakwaka’wakw community members on protocols and engagement,” said Michelle van Beusekom, president and CEO of Knowledge Network in a statement.

“It’s such an honour to have the opportunity to make a documentary about the relationship between Dr. Ida Halpern and Chief Mungo Martin,” added Hager. “Despite being from different cultures — Indigenous people in Canada and Jewish people in Austria — both experienced cultural erasure and genocide by the governments of their time. Yet against all odds, these two extraordinary people survived their government’s persecution and met in Vancouver to collaborate on preserving songs that have been part of Kwakwaka’wakw culture for countless generations.”

Image courtesy of Acimow Media