Lindsay McIntyre (she/her) is a filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist of Inuit and settler descent working primarily with analogue film. She has an MFA in Film Production from Concordia University and a BFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of Alberta. Her multiple award-winning short documentaries, experimental films and expanded cinema performances are often process-based and for some she also makes her own 16mm film with handmade silver gelatine emulsion.
Working in 16mm film using experimental and handmade techniques, her short films circle themes of portraiture, place, form and personal histories. Interested simultaneously in the apparatus of cinema and representation, she aims to bridge gaps in collective experience and is interested in integrating theory and practice, form and content. Current film projects include Tuktuit (Caribou), a experimental doc about caribou made with caribou-based gelatin emulsion, In a Name, an animated documentary web series in development about her “great” uncle Kiviaq, and a SSHRC-funded research and creation project linking land use, art practices, cultural knowledge and resource extraction in the circumpolar north.
Having made over 40 short films over the past 20 years, she is stepping up to narrative with her first feature The Words We Can’t Speak (in development) which won the 2021 WIDC Feature Film Award (worth $250K in in-kind supports). She hopes to share authentic stories including from the generations of urban Inuit who have been displaced from Inuit Nunangat.
Recent projects include NIGIQTUQ ᓂᒋᖅᑐᖅ (2023) which won Best Short Live Action at imagineNATIVE and a submission to the 2025 Academy Awards as well as the EDA Award for Best Short Film Directed by a Woman at the Whistler Film Festival, an animated documentary for INUA at Qaumajuq, Ajjigiingiluktaaqtugut: We Are All Different (2021), which earned a special mention as one of 2021 VIFF’s Best Shorts and was nominated for Best Animation at the American Indian Film Festival, an award-winning short Where We Stand (2015), about the state of analogue film in the digital age, and a monumental projection-mapping installation on the Vancouver Art Gallery, If These Walls (2019).
She was named the 2021 Women in the Director’s Chair Feature Film Award winner, the Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton recipient for Excellence in Media Arts by the Canada Council (2013), was honoured with the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award (Hnatyshyn Foundation, 2017) and her personal documentary Her Silent Life won Best Experimental Film at imagineNATIVE (2012). She has been a member of several artist-run film labs including the Double Negative Collective, EMO Collective, Iris Collective, and an international consortium of emulsioneers. She is also honoured to have participated in the 2020-2021 edition of Women in the Director’s Chair Story & Leadership program, Women in View’s Five in Focus: Indigenous 2021, The Whistler Screenwriter’s Lab, Diversity of Voices, and WIFTV’s Tricksters and Writers. She is also a skilled Cinematographer (Ste. Anne, LAKE, The Governmental Films of Matthew Rankin), and has won awards for her work as Editor and Production Designer.
Her short documentaries, experimental films, and expanded cinema performances have been seen around the world including at Ann Arbor, Anthology Film Archives, Pleasure Dome, Mono No Aware, Rotterdam, Oberhausen, Analogica, WNDX, VIFF, Whistler, imagineNATIVE, Images, Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Raindance, One Flaming Arrow, and Black Maria, and can be found in several permanent collections. She is an Associate Professor of Film + Screen Arts at Emily Carr University of Art + Design on unceded Coast Salish territories and she teaches film anywhere else that people will listen.