Iglulik (Mar 13/06) - Inuit got a chance to see the new Igloolik Isuma Productions film before it makes its big entrance at the Toronto International Film Festival in September.

Iglulik residents were the first to see The Journals of Knud Rasmussen over the weekend. It will be previewed in 55 other Inuit communities before hitting the Toronto screens on Sept. 7.

The film's opening at the 30th annual festival was announced Thursday.

"Zacharius Kunuk and Norman Cohn (the film's directors) have created a truly visionary work of art," said festival co-director Noah Cowan in a recent press release, "They have again redefined the scope and visual palette of Canadian film, while telling a profound and moving story."

The film's showing around Nunavut mirrors the first run of Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, which was first shown in a high school gymnasium in Iglulik, where it was filmed.

That movie burst onto the international scene in 2001, winning Best First Feature Film at the Cannes Film Festival, five Genie awards and the best Canadian feature award at the 2001 Toronto film festival.

"The Inuit is our first audience, so we're going to show it to them first," said director Zacharius Kunuk.

He said the lack of theatres in Nunavut meant this would be the only chance to show the film before it came out on DVD.

"By then, it's 2008. That's no good," he said.

Where Atanarjuat dealt with the traditional lives of Inuit, Kunuk said The Journals of Knud Rasmussen takes place in Iglulik in 1922 as Christianity and commerce began to take hold.

The story follows the struggles of one of the last great shamans and his daughter as they try to find balance between shamanism and Christianity. Kunuk said the film ends with a "shocking truth" about this balance, but would not go into detail before the movie was released.

"I was shocked when I watched it," he said.

The film is based on the writings of Knud Rasmussen, the Danish explorer and ethnographer who chronicled the lives and stories of Inuit elders in his many journeys to the North.

Kunuk said this information is supplemented by oral history passed down from elders' recollections of the time.

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is a Canada-Denmark co-production, featuring Danish and Inuit performers, but filmed in Iglulik.