Igloolik Isuma Productions clarifies its financial status

Please allow us to correct some errors in Nunatsiaq News’ story (“Renowned Inuit film company runs out of cash,” NN, July 15, 2011]) on the closing down of Igloolik Isuma Productions (IIP) after 25 years of Inuit-language filmmaking.

First, on behalf of ourselves and our late partners and co-founders, Paul Apak and Pauloosie Qulitalik, we want to thank the hundreds of people in Igloolik and other Nunavut communities who worked on our films for the past 25 years, and the many others who watched and appreciated our work.

Since 1985 we produced over forty Inuktitut-language films celebrating Inuit culture, history and point-of-view including the Nunavut (Our Land) TV Series, The Fast Runner Trilogy of feature films: Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen and Before Tomorrow and documentaries on subjects from shamanism, bowhead whale hunting and residential school testimonies to our last two IIP productions, Exile, and Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, completed and released in 2010.

In one of Canada’s most difficult regions to do business, IIP created $10 million in jobs and economic development for Nunavummiut, while presenting the ancient heritage of the past, and the modern competence of Inuit today, to a worldwide audience through professional filmmaking.

We thank everyone who supported and encouraged us all these years. We hope our films will continue to be seen by Inuit and non-Inuit for many generations to come.

Second, even big companies like Atuqtuarvik Corp. and RSM Richter make mistakes. Nunatsiaq News based this story on two documents filed to Quebec Superior Court — one by Atuqtuarvik Corporation, Isuma’s principal creditor and preferred shareholder, on May 31, 2011, and the second on June 17, 2011 by RSM Richter, the Montreal-based receiver appointed at Atuqtuarvik’s request — that contain math errors and outdated information that get IIP’s actual indebtedness wrong by $800,000.

Atuqtuarvik’s Motion for the Appointment of a Receiver May 31, 2011, still available at nunatsiaqonline.ca, wrongly included debts to National Bank, Alliance Atlantis and Royal Bank that already had been repaid when the Motion was filed.

Richter’s Notice and Statement of the Receiver June 17, 2011 was even worse: they made a mathematical error that added up $766,891.47 in their listings TWICE, reporting an amount of “total known debts” to the court whose math was off by 43 per cent.

After a 25-year track record creating jobs and films for Inuit, IIP is insolvent but hardly “drowning in debt.” No employees or small suppliers were left unpaid; all remaining debt to large agencies is fully secured and every dollar should be recovered.

In a global recession, with Canada’s national film industry down 10 per cent last year alone, no film company can survive in Nunavut without adapting to new technologies.

Igloolik Isuma Productions’ principal creditor is Atuqtuarvik Corp., an investment agency of the Nunavut land claims system and a preferred shareholder, that is, a partner in IIP itself. We are grateful for Atuqtuarvik’s support twice since 2005; in April 2009 they approved a third investment in Isuma’s three-year business plan to change focus from a shrinking film industry to new media and the internet.

In July 2009, Atuqtuarvik made a $500,000 interim advance on their approved investment; but after waiting 18 months for Nunavut Business Credit Corp. to make a final decision, the business plan fell through. IIP ran out of time and money waiting, Atuqtuarvik’s advance became a loan, and we couldn’t pay it back.

We have a new company, Kingulliit Productions Inc., starting over in a changing new media industry. Our internet distribution company, Isuma Distribution International (IDI), continues to grow and insures that Isuma’s films remain visible online to Inuit and non-Inuit alike on IsumaTV [www.isuma.tv], the leading internet platform worldwide for Inuit and Aboriginal media. IsumaTV carries 2600 films in 46 languages, 750 films in Inuktitut, including everything produced by IIP during the past 25 years.

Our newest project is to bring this website at high-speed into Nunavut’s low-speed communities so Inuit can watch free Inuktitut-language media and other films from around the world in local schools and on cableTV community channels wherever IsumaTV MediaPlayers are installed. Our first three pilot communities bring IsumaTV high-speed to Igloolik, Pangnirtuq and many areas of Iqaluit.

With support just approved by Canada Media Fund’s Experimental Stream for 2011-12, we hope to extend the Isuma TV high-speed network to all Nunavut communities by 2013.

Zacharias Kunuk
Norman Cohn

Kingulliit Productions Inc
Isuma Distribution International Inc

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