Today we received word that 46-year-old filmmaker Jeff Barnaby has passed away after a year-long battle with cancer. He leaves behind a wife, a son, and a career as a singular, important voice in genre cinema, the full potential of which we can now only imagine.
I wrote the below editorial, titled “Museum Piece,” for our weekly newsletter after meeting Jeff at the Museum of Modern Art this past July, where his two features and a short were screened. Before that event, I only knew Jeff through social media, so it was great to be able to say hello in person, but it was even more fun to look at his socials all that week and see him humorously sharing his trip to New York, complete with losing his wallet in Times Square, “Forest Gumping” (his phrase) his way to the MoMA stage, and marveling at the fact that the screening was even happening. As he shared on Instagram, “My art has now screened in the same building as some of the greatest filmmakers and artists on earth… I am floored and beyond grateful. What a strange and beautiful life.”
I’m reposting this now tragically outdated opinion piece because I don’t know what else to say at the moment. In the wake of Jeff’s death, its sentiment is more accurate, ironic, and futile than ever, and it’s such a helpless, pissed-off feeling to re-read it today. I send my deepest condolences to Jeff's family, friends, and fans, and I mourn the stories we will never get from him.
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Last weekend I went to the Museum of Modern Art’s Messaging the Monstrous series to attend a screening of Miꞌkmaq filmmaker Jeff Barnaby’s films: his short The Colony, his debut feature Rhymes for Young Ghouls, and his reservation-set zombie epic Blood Quantum.
It was the first two that I made the trip to see; I’d seen and enjoyed Blood Quantum on Shudder, but I was curious about Rhymes, as it dealt with the epidemic of child abuse inside Canadian residential schools that have been in the news in recent years (though Barnaby’s film is a decade old and thus missed being part of the recent conversation). I also wanted to say hello to Barnaby, who I know as a funny, passionate and insightful voice on social media.
I was knocked out by the films, and in the q&a Barnaby presented as a humorous, blunt, self-assured individual who knows he’s talented, though warmly humble about being honored by a MoMA screening. I could say all the expected stuff about how, in watching Barnaby’s body of work in one sitting, I could see the connective themes, the aesthetic throughlines, and the growing palette of the filmmaker across the years, etc., etc. All true. But in watching his 2007 short, and his 2013 feature, and his 2019 feature, what I felt more than anything was something like panic – the helpless terror of watching a precious resource swirl down the drain.
Because yeah, each film shows artistic growth, a remarkably sure hand, and an instinctive knack for visual storytelling that, I can tell you, is NOT a given in the indie horror scene. And yeah, these are exciting projects that give voice to a culture, a region and a people that you almost never see on screen, let alone in horror. Those things make Barnaby’s work exciting. But when Barnaby discussed his recently deceased mom, and the “cosmology” of the Miꞌkmaq language dying with her, and when I started thinking about the span of time between these projects, I started thinking about the urgency of this work, and I got anxious over the fact that Barnaby isn’t getting to make more films, more frequently.
Barnaby has expressed this frustration online before, and at the MoMA his vibe was almost one of resignation, acceptance. Chill, at any rate. Probably that’s the only thing one can do to stay sane in his position. But sitting at the MoMA and doing that math, my outrage on his behalf was fresh and new. How is this vital, talented filmmaker only getting to make a movie every six years? How are we letting him become a literal museum piece already? And how the hell is he this GOOD when he so seldom gets to stretch these creative muscles?
I know movies are hard to get made, I know it’s a business, and I also know there are a lot of indie producers reading this newsletter who somehow crank out four films a year. During COVID. (I won’t name names. Yet.) So I need those producers who are reading this to go watch Barnaby’s films (Blood Quantum is on Shudder; Rhymes is on Tubi and Fandor; The Colony is on Vimeo), and I need you to figure out how to get the system you’ve created for yourself to work for guys like Barnaby. Because when you see his work, you’ll agree that it’s not okay that we don’t have more movies by this dude.
