Igloolik Isuma Productions

From the archived Documenta 11 website: www.documenta12.de//archiv/d11/data/english/index.html

Founded 1988 in Igloolik, Canada, by Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak, Pauloosie Qulitalik, and Norman Cohn.

“Igloolik Isuma Productions is an Inuit owned production company with the aim of preserving the oral narratives of the Inuit past as well as the realities of social life before the current wave of modernization. “Inuit storytelling is a sophisticated mix of fact, fiction, performance, improvisation, past and future which maintained Inuit culture for 4000 years without a written language”4000 years of oral history silenced by fifty years of priests, schools, and cable TV.” Nunavut (Our Land, 1994-95) consists of 13 half-hour episodes of Igloolik family life, filmed like an Inuit Soap opera set in 1945. It is as much documentary as fiction since whether they are building a stone hut against the winter cold or hunting seal pups, the emphasis is on both showing a younger generation how these things were done (and still can be done) while at the same time preserving the memories and skills of the older generations. Kunuk sees the documentary form as an extension of and alternative to oral language, enabling the community to develop new forms of story-telling that will help them survive another thousand years. Recently, Kunuk directed Atanarjuat- The Fast Runner (2001), the first Inuit fiction film to receive critical acclaim in Cannes and elsewhere.”

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