Nathan VanderKlippe
Northern News Services

Rankin Inlet (July 17/02) - Igloolik Isuma Productions might not shoot its next barrenlands Inuit film in Nunavut if the territorial government doesn't come up with a tax incentives package for filmmakers.

"Even though this is the right place (the High Arctic) to film it, we may go to northern Quebec," said company president Zacharias Kunuk.

Igloolik Isuma is the company that created Atanarjuat, the internationally-lauded film about an ancient Inuit legend. The company spent years cobbling together the $1.97 million needed to film the feature.

But as Kunuk and Igloolik Isuma secretary-treasurer Norman Cohn work through a script about Ava, a famous shaman who lived in the Iglulik area, they are saying never again.

"That was a once only, unique kind of situation that was against all odds," said Cohn. "But we could never go through that process again."

Quebec has a hefty tax break plan, which can contribute as much as 35 per cent of the cost of the film, a tremendous incentive to film there.

"We're talking money. Big money. And every little cent helps," said Kunuk.

At home, Kunuk is frustrated by meetings with the government of Nunavut that don't seem to make any headway.

"The culture department has the lowest budget," he said. "I don't know what's going on, or if it is a concern to the government." Cohn is adamant that filmmaking is vitally important, comparing his industry to the diamond mines.

"All a diamond mine contributes is a handful of jobs. So does a film. Every film contributes the same handful of jobs. But the film is like an advertisement for everything Nunavut stands for," he said.

"John (Houston's) film is probably going to put as much money in Rankin as a diamond mine might over the course of a year, and it would produce a lot more if we had an infrastructure," he said.

"Which cultures in the world will survive in the next 100 years who don't have somebody making movies about them?" said Cohn.

"Inuit ought not to be the last people on earth to realize that. Nunavut is in a life and death competition for cultural identity and the dollars that go with it."