Darrell Greer
Northern News Services

Coral Harbour (May 08/01) - Coral Harbour wrestling sensation Joseph Nakoolak will soon be making his television debut in Europe.

Nakoolak will be featured in a 26-minute program to be broadcast on the German-French cultural channel ARTE, and in a 45-minute version on Norddeutscher Rundfunk (NDR), a Northern German public television station.

A German film crew contacted Coral wrestling coach Bruce McKitrick earlier this year about Nakoolak.

Co-director Henning Hesse told McKitrick the German crew was interested in doing a film on a person from a rural or remote community who was a medal contender at the 2002 Arctic Winter Games.

They wanted to tie the athlete's performance in with the Games and an overview of Canada.

"I told them most of Canada isn't exactly like Coral Harbour, but come on over," says McKitrick with a laugh.

The three-man crew -- Hesse, co-director Matthias Braun and cameraman Markus Mueller -- arrived in Coral about a week before the AWG.

They attended a few of Nakoolak's wrestling practices and joined him out on the land caribou hunting. There was also filming done at Nakoolak's home and during one of his hockey games.

McKitrick says the crew filmed Nakoolak's AWG matches, and were on hand when he claimed two individual gold medals and Team Nunavut won silver.

He says it was a special feeling having a film crew follow Nakoolak around.

"They got permission to come to our room for a little bit in Iqaluit. They were coming down the hall when one of the kids asked me if they were here for Joseph," he recalls.

"When I said yes, the kid replied, 'I thought so.' It's quite impressive when you look at five years ago, Joseph was this shy kid that nobody knew about. Now they see a film crew in the hall way and automatically assume it's for him."

The crew returned to Coral after the AWG to finish up some additional shots in the town and out on the land.

McKitrick says one of the more memorable moments happened during the caribou hunt.

"It was really funny to watch Joseph trying to sneak up on this caribou with three big guys following behind him with cameras and a boom microphone hanging over his head. The first caribou took off but we managed to get a couple later on."

Happy to help his sport

The crew has finished the 26-minute feature and began working on the longer segment this week in Germany.

Nakoolak, a modest man of few words, has taken the whole filming experience in stride.

He says it felt strange having the crew around him all the time and, although he enjoyed the experience, was relieved when shooting was completed.

"Having something like this done puts attention on wrestling and I was happy to do something I know is good for our sport," says Nakoolak.