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IGLULIK - Igloolik Isuma Productions is gaining recognition for its latest film, Before Tomorrow, as it screens around the continent.

The film premiered in Iglulik last February and has gone on to win the best Canadian first feature award at the Toronto International Film Festival last month.

Madeline Ivalu, actor and co-director of Isuma's new film, Before Tomorrow, walks on the film set. The screenplay is by Marie-Hélène Cousineau in collaboration with Susan Avingaq and Ivalu. It is based on For Morgendaggen by Jorn Riel. - photo courtesy of Igloolik Isuma Productions

The movie follows Inuit families before southerners encroached on their land. They share speculative stories about who Europeans are and what their motives might be.

The horrors of the impending contact soon manifest.

It will premiere in Montreal at the Festival du Nouveau Cinema in October and again in Toronto during ImagineNative, a film fest for First Nations, Inuit and Metis that runs from Oct. 15 to 19. It will then move on to San Francisco and beyond.

A host of other Isuma projects are also in development. Many of them are being shared on the innovative Isuma TV website at www.isuma.tv.

Filmmaker and executive producer Zacharius Kunuk and former Nunavut language commissioner Peter Irniq are collaborating on a project called Testimony.

They are collecting interviews with survivors of Nunavut's residential schools.

"What we're doing is actually putting them on Isuma TV," said Stephane Rituit, one of Isuma's producers. Right now you can see them on the channel called Collective9. There are 20 more interviews to come.

"Right now we are in the process of translating the interviews with English subtitles because these voices have to be heard and understood by others."

Beyond the translated subtitles, no other changes are being made to the uploaded footage.

"It gives an open voice to say what they want and as much as they want without fear of being cut or edited," Rituit said.

Kunuk will eventually edit the interviews into a one-hour documentary for television. It will air on APTN and then move into syndication.

Kunuk began production on another television project this summer. Traditional Homeland explores elders' reflections on changes on the land and the development of industry and transportation in the territory.

Portions of the project will be uploaded onto the website throughout the next year. It will be edited into a feature for television broadcast on Superchannel in the summer of 2009.

The Isuma TV website will undergo some changes soon. The site will feature more interactive content.

The filmmakers are collecting indigenous voices and images by scouting for film and tape from small grant projects, community television stations and past programming from the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation produced in the years before APTN. They will digitize the film and tape and make it available on the site.

"Anybody who has precious tapes they want to preserve and put online, they can just contact us," Rituit said.

In the near future the site will also provide space for indigenous musicians to share their music and even sell it through iTunes.

Similar space will empower visual artists wishing to find international markets through the website as well.