LOGLINE: Gage, The Cree/mer’ Mistik climaxes to staggering new heights in this slice-of-life look at video game streaming stardom through the eyes of a Cree queer youth.

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Synopsis: Gage, a young man (25), moves from his rez to “the Big City” to pursue his grandparents dream of him going to college and making something of himself. Between going to classes, working 2 full time jobs & trying to find time to study, he dreams of playing video games & streaming. The 90-minute feature film will be a life portraiture observing Gage becoming a Cree Gamer & Streamer or “The Cree/mer”.

 

The story: In the beginning of the story Gage is a struggling ‘BRDBND’ streamer (think Twitch) as he tries to complete a full workload at school and 2 jobs. The crippling debt and responsibility to his commitments makes it very hard to stream, but he manages 4 hours almost every night from midnight to 4AM. This is where the film takes place, through the eyes of the audience as Gage does ‘Story time’ and we watch tableaus of his life. Gage has 4 viewers and doesn’t even have a whisper of an idea about making money from doing this, but at the end of the story his average is 40 thousand and climbing. Gage’s humility and calming demeanor gives his audience something to aspire to thus adding to the hook to watch, contributing to his mounting success. 

Though in his interior life, we see the journey Gage takes from isolated ‘NDN’ in “The Big City” looking for a place to exist. By the end of the story Gage has community, he has purpose and he is thriving far outpacing the expectations of his grandfather which is far more important than adhering to a status quo that so many of us strive for in the day-to-day.

 

Culmination of the story: Gage was following the tenant of “the new buffalo” but at the end of this story he reunites with Papa Jim who acknowledges his prowess of being self-taught and following the path of “The Cunning of the White Man”, instead of adapting to “the white man’s world” he was able to rise and conquer it in his own way. To Papa Jim this is the most valuable lesson and shows Jim that his grandson is a master without even trying to be. This demonstrates humility, he is able to sustain himself, find a new artform, profit off it, inspire others and change his circumstances.

This is the culmination of ‘The Cree/mer’ earning Gage the name ‘Néhiyasêw Otâcimow’. Gage ends the story by embodying ‘The Cree Gamer and Streamer’. -ODMK