Writer/Directors Neil Diamond and Joanne Robertson will join the audience for a Q&A following the 7:30 p.m. screening of their film SO SURREAL: BEHIND THE MASKS on Friday, September 4. Presented by Friends of The Ross and the Norman A. Geske Cinema Showcase. Tickets for the screening are at regular Ross prices.

NEIL DIAMOND is a Cree filmmaker from Waskaganish, Quebec, on the coast of James Bay. Neil codirected the award-winning feature documentaries, Reel Injun and the more recent Red Fever along with One More River, Cree Spoken Here, and Heavy Metal: A Mining Disaster in Northern Quebec. His credits also include Inuit Cree Reconciliation, The Last Explorer, and Dab Iyiyuu. He is an awardwinning photographer, and co-founder of The Nation, the first news magazine to serve the Cree of northern Quebec and Ontario.

JOANNE ROBERTSON grew up as a settler on the west coast on the lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish). Today she is a director, researcher and creative producer. She first began her work with Rezolution Pictures over 25 years ago, collaborating with Cree co-director Neil Diamond on such documentary projects as Cree Spoken Here, Dab Iyiyuu and One More River. Since then she has honed her research, directing and story producing skills on diverse doc projects including the NFB’s Making Movie History, Ports d’attache, Chacun son île and as story producer on APTN’s Lands Enchanted and the award-winning documentary Red Fever. Joanne was co-producer on Kara Blake’s installation Lasciare Suonore at Montreal’s Place des Arts and Todd Stewart’s award-winning short animation The Wind and the Trees.

SO SURREAL: BEHIND THE MASKS is a feature documentary that traces the storied journey of Indigenous masks from the far reaches of Turtle Island (North America) into the hands of European Surrealists, influencing the work and worldview of some of the most well-known modern artists and writers of all time including Max Ernst, André Breton, Roberto Matta and Joan Miró – all while following the dramatic quest to return a mask that was brutally stolen from the Kwakwa̱ka̱ ʼwakw people on Canada’s northwest coast over a century ago. Part caper, part road trip, part spiritual journey, So Surreal: Behind the Masks follows Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond as he travels coast-to-coast and across the Atlantic and back, gradually piecing together this groundbreaking global story of influence, reconnection and restitution.