Thoughts on Inuit filmmaking, from Zacharias Kunuk

The new anthology Me Artsy draws on the experiences of 14 Aboriginal artists from across the country, to understand how their identity plays into their work. (COURTESY OF DOUGLAS & MACINTYRE)

In a new anthology of Indigenous Canadian artists, Igloolik’s Zacharias Kunuk writes about the his foray into filmmaking and the creation of his award-winning film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. (FILE PHOTO)

ZACHARIAS KUNUK
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Douglas & McIntyre

What inspires the artistic spirit?

That’s something Ojibwa playwright and broadcaster Drew Hayden Taylor wanted to explore through the lens of Indigenous culture.

And his new book, Me Artsy, does just that — drawing on the experiences of 14 Aboriginal artists from across the country, to understand how their identity plays into their work.

One of the book’s essays was penned by Igloolik filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk, president and co-founder of Isuma Productions, Canada’s first independent Inuit production company. That company has since dissolved but Kunuk’s new company, Kinguliit Productions, has risen to take its place.

In the newly-released anthology, Kunuk describes the spark that lead him to into filmmaking and the creation of his award-winning film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner.

In my late teen years, I was really into carving and making a living. One day I bought a 35mm still camera and began taking pictures. The problem was that when I finished a roll, I’d take it to the store and have to wait two to three weeks, sometimes a month, to get the pictures back.

In 1981 I started a family and had to pay the rent with my carvings. I was now dealing with an art dealer in Montreal—Eskimo Art Gallery. I used to go down to Montreal to sell to this gallery, and while I was down there in the big city, I was amazed at all the things to see: tall buildings and stuff. I also learned that any breathing person could own a moving-picture camera.

Interested in the idea, I told the dealer I wanted a camera like that. So the art dealer took me to a corner camera store called Black’s. There I bought a Sanyo colour video camera, with a tripod and porter pack, and a twenty-six-inch floor TV and VCR so I could watch what I shot. In 1981 there was still no television in my community. This was because back in 1975 our community voted for no TV, and again in 1979, so there was nothing like that in Inuktitut.

I remember I used to have recorded cartoons to watch. Kids playing outside would be glued to my window watching TV with me. But in October 1983 our village finally got a TV signal, and we watched our first hockey game on television.

For the first two months that I was trying my new camera out, it kept recording in black and white, even though my camera was supposed to record in colour. Finally, someone who was shooting in Igloolik showed me the colour balance — just a simple switch. From then on, I would record community events and my family.

In 1984, I was still figuring out my camera when Paul Apak came to me and asked if I wanted to work for the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation. He said they were looking for help and I decided to try it. So I worked for IBC for eight years doing camera, sound, lights and editing — which at that time was on 3/4-inch tapes.

Before long, I became the station manager. I never really had any formal training in handling a camera. I learned most of it from Paul Apak Angiliq, and also I received two weeks of camera training in Iqaluit.

The trainer for those two weeks was Norman Cohn. What Norman taught us was very different from my IBC days. At IBC we would set up the tripod and just shoot from that one spot, maybe moving a little. But Norman taught us that as cameramen the whole floor was ours. So we took the camera off the tripod and started to move around, which to me was more fun and the results looked more real.

One of Norman’s tests was shooting in church at a Sunday-morning mass. We had to walk right up to the priest during his sermon delivery, which I have never done before. I had to get shots from all angles and locations. It was scary, but at the editing table it turned out very well.

My Igloolik station was winning lots of production awards. Members of my staff were constantly walking around carrying a 3/4-inch camera, porter pack, battery belt and tripod, with tapes stuffed in their pockets. I wanted to reward them with a four-wheeler but my director said we didn’t have the budget. Angry and disappointed, I quit.

Right afterwards, I co-founded Igloolik Isuma Productions in 1991. Even when I worked for IBC, during my holidays and time off I was doing my own independent projects, even as far back as 1985 when I made my first documentary from an Inuk point of view. In 1988 I tried my first drama — three of them, in fact, called Qaggiq, Nunapa and Saputi.

Soon afterwards, in 1994–95, I made a 13.5-hour series titled “Nunavut.” In 1999–2000 we shot Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, then The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, and after that my company made more documentaries ranging from Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change to Inuit Cree Reconciliation … so many of them that I have lost count.

A lot has happened since those early years. Igloolik Isuma Productions declared bankruptcy. I got my Order of Canada and an Aboriginal Achievement Award. In 2001 Atanarjuat won the Cannes Caméra d’Or prize. I have been awarded an honorary doctorate from Trent University, Ont., and I have another one coming. There is so much I did that I won’t even talk about because that’s who I am. In our culture we don’t talk about ourselves or how great we are.

My culture, its four thousand years of history, and other Aboriginal cultures have always fascinated me. I am fascinated when I lie down to sleep in an igloo, counting the blocks in the spiral and thinking that whoever figured this out must have been a genius … and whoever figured out how to build a kayak and to hitch dogs to pull a sled? It just blows my mind.

So, being fascinated by my culture and with what has been invented for this climate, as a filmmaker making different Inuit culture documentaries I feel that I am doing my job, and this is what I love to do: I love my job.

Excerpted from the book Me Artsy © 2015, by Drew Hayden Taylor. “Story of My Life,” © Zacharias Kunuk. Published by Douglas & McIntyre. Reprinted with permission of the publisher.