Neil Diamond | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Cree-Canadian |
| Occupation | Filmmaker |
Neil Diamond is a Cree-Canadian filmmaker born and raised in Waskaganish, Quebec. Working with Rezolution Pictures, Diamond has directed the documentary films Reel Injun, The Last Explorer, One More River, Heavy Metal: A Mining Disaster in Northern Quebec and Cree Spoken Here, along with three seasons of DAB IYIYUU, a series for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network about Cree elders.[1][2]
In the 2008 docudrama The Last Explorer, Diamond explored the story of his great-uncle George Elson, a Cree guide who helped to map Labrador as part of an ill-fated 1903 expedition with Leonidas Hubbard and Dillon Wallace, and a return voyage in 1905 with Hubbard's widow Mina Hubbard.[3]
As of April 2011, Diamond is developing a project with Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk about the 18th-century conflict between Cree and Inuit, which lasted almost a century.[4]
He codirected, with Catherine Bainbridge, and starred in the 2024 documentary Red Fever, about cultural appropriation and the Western world's pop culture fascination with the stereotypical imagery of Indigenous people.[5] Later in the same year he also premiered So Surreal: Behind the Masks, a documentary co-directed with Joanne Robertson exploring the influence of traditional indigenous masks on artistic surrealism.[6]