Forbidden Music

2025 • Directed by

Barbara Hager

Documentary

The documentary explores the extraordinary lives of Kwakwaka’wakw Chief Mungo Martin and Jewish ethno-musicologist Ida Halpern. Their combined efforts nearly 75 years ago led to preventing hundreds of First Nations songs from being lost forever. They not only shared a deep dedication to preserving the embedded cultural knowledge that these songs held, they had also experienced the heart-wrenching effects of cultural genocide on their people.