Nunavut’s Zach Kunuk helps rising Inuit filmmaker

Award-winning Nunavut filmmaker Zach Kunuk is the recipient of the 2017 Technicolor Clyde Gilmour Award from the Toronto Film Critics Association. The TFCA said it awards the Clyde Gilmour Award to “a Canadian who has enriched the understanding and appreciation of film in this country.” Under the terms of the award, Technicolor donated $50,000 in services to a filmmaker of Kunuk’s choosing—Montreal-based Inuk filmmaker and visual artist Asinnajaq. (PHOTO COURTESY OF THE TFCA)

Two Inuit filmmakers received a big show of support Jan. 9 from the Toronto Film Critics Association, with award-winning filmmaker Zach Kunuk passing on his award’s $50,000 in services to Isabella Weetaluktuk, a young Inukjuak-born, Montreal-raised Inuk filmmaker who prefers now to be known by her Inuktitut name, Asinnajaq.

At the annual gala of the association, which comprises Toronto-based journalists and broadcasters who specialize in film criticism and commentary, Kunuk received the Technicolor Clyde Gilmour Award, awarded to “a Canadian who has enriched the understanding and appreciation of film in this country.”

“Zacharias Kunuk brings unique stories to the screen,” said the TFCA’s president Peter Howell in a release on Kunuk’s award. “They range from the centuries-old Inuit legend behind his acclaimed 2001 debut, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, to his more recent rethink of violent westerns with Maliglutit (Searchers). Each beckons us to look at our northern neighbours with fresh eyes.”

Under the terms of the award, Technicolor donates $50,000 in services to a filmmaker of the recipient’s choice. So Kunuk chose Asinnajaq.

“It’s really amazing now to feel supported from Zacharias, whose work is legendary,” Asinnajaq told Nunatsiaq News. “Getting an award like that makes me feel like I have to work even harder than I do, because I think you have to keep on earning things, even in reverse.”

Asked how she plans to use the award, Asinnajaq said she has many project ideas.

“I’m still trying to fit the services this award allows me with a project idea that I have,” she said. “I will probably have to find a way to shoot a short film in the next year, which is a bit worrying but mostly very exciting.”

Among the projects she’s working on: a project with Kunuk and Norman Cohn for the Venice Biennale, and another with Heather Igloliorte, Krista Zawadski and Jade Nasogaluak Carpenter for the curation of the opening of the Inuit Art Centre in Winnipeg.

Asinnajaq, 26, a graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, premiered Three Thousand, her first film with the National Film Board, at the 18th annual imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in October 2016.

She’s now been travelling a bit with Three Thousand—which received this week a nomination as best short documentary from the Canadian Screen Awards competition—and plans to head off next Sunday to show her film in Finland.

Her short film begins in the 1940s with archival footage and shows how Inuit life evolved before and after contact with the South.

Three Thousand compiles some of that archival footage and then shifts into animation for the future portion, done in collaboration with Canadian animator Patrick Defasten.

Three Thousand (Trailer) from NFB/marketing on Vimeo.