Meet Beau Dick: Maker of Monsters is a portrait of a Canadian art legend, an enigmatic carver from Alert Bay, BC.  Beau Dick’s remarkable masks have been celebrated across the global art scene as vibrant expressions of West Coast Indigenous culture and a sophisticated crossover into the contemporary art world.

In his activism, Beau relied on his culture to inform him. In 2013, Dick organized a collective journey from Quatsino on the northern end of Vancouver Island to the BC Parliament Building in Victoria, a 10-day, 500-kilometre walk. There, he and others enacted a copper-cutting ceremony—a form of public shaming signifying the cleaving of a relationship, in this case a break between First Nations and the former BC government. In 2014, he led a similar journey from UBC to the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. “The copper is a symbol of justice, truth and balance, and to break one is a threat, a challenge and can be an insult. If you break copper on someone and shame them, there should be an apology.”—Beau Dick

Admirers and collectors of Pacific Northwest art are notably unanimous in their admiration of Beau Dick. Some consider him to be the best West Coast artist since contact. His generous and prolific nature embodied the spirit of potlatch, the giving ceremony at the heart of Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw culture. Meet Beau Dick illuminates a man whose art and life continue to transcend expectations and boundaries.  Beautiful cinematography!