Nunavut film on the rise
"I've been called an activist ... I'm just trying to preserve the culture and the language": Kunuk
Beth Brown
Northern News Services
Monday, January 9, 2017
IGLULIK
"We shot it in the coldest month of the year," said Iglulik filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk. "It was March and 2015 was cold."
Iglulik filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk's feature film Maliglutit (Searchers) will open the 2016 Canada's Top Ten Film Festival this month. - photo courtesy of TIFF |
Kunuk is reflecting on his award-winning feature film Maliglutit (Searchers), set to open the 2016 Canada's Top Ten Film Festival, an annual event by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) held later this month.
The film made its world debut in Toronto in September, and is inspired by John Ford's 1956 film, The Searchers. In Maliglutit, an Inuk woman is kidnapped and her husband sets off to find the perpetrator and seek revenge.
Kunuk is known for his 2001 film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, which respondents to a poll at the 2015 TIFF named the best-ever Canadian film.
Nuavut News/North had a chat with Kunuk to catch up on his success this year, current projects and plans for the future.
The Maliglutit story stems from a childhood memory of seeing a woman tied up and taken away from Kunuk's camp. The film, modelled after a western, is also a look back to films that both captivated and troubled him in
his youth.
"When we came to the communities we used to watch cowboys and indians," he said, noting the plot works for a revenge film. "We used that model but we made it our own."
Kunuk has been called an activist for his work to promote Inuit culture, but says for him it's more about accuracy than activism.
"I've been called an activist because I've tried to use Inuktitut first on my films and subtitles to other languages. I'm just trying to preserve the culture and the language.
"This is the only thing I know and I'm trying to preserve it. A hundred years from now people will study these films. We are trying to get them right. The setting has to be right, the costume has to be right."
And, the language has to be right. That's why Kunuk works with one community at a time.
"I don't like to mix dialects so we try to use one group."
He chooses actors by looking at different expressions of the people who ask to be involved, their happiest and angriest looks. The team will also use marker on the photos to add tattoos to female faces, or long hair for men.
Then he looks for commitment.
"You cannot just leave a project in the middle," he said.
"Then we have elders fit them with costumes, and they learn how to act. In Searchers we were training them how to get into their characters and how to drive dog teams."
Kunuk is currently working on a seven-part TV documentary series, Hunting With My Ancestors.
"It's elders showing us how to hunt."
This summer his crew filmed a bowhead hunt, which will be cut down to a half-hour episode.
"Just last month we shot fishing with nets under the ice. We were filming how they set up these nets with an ice crawler. And then they started catching fish and char and lake trout."
He is also looking into making an animated film based on the story of a shaman apprentice.
"Down the road I want to do a feature film on the Eskimo hunter - he used to hunt Eskimos in Northern Quebec."
It's been a busy year for Kunuk, but he said the industry is in its early days in Nunavut, and there are entire genres of programming that haven't even been touched.
"I'll do my part. We are still just starting."
So far though, he's satisfied with the results.
"This year we planned that we were not going to go after awards, we didn't even submit because we were not. We are not after awards, we are happy where we are. Can't ask for more."
