Another creative triumph for Isuma

When they released Atanarjuat in 2001, the Igloolik Isuma media collective proved they can take an epic myth set in the timeless past, shape it to fit a feature-length film and then use the Inuit language to create a brilliant work of art.
With the release of Qallunajatut (Urban Inuk) last month, they prove they can point their cameras at the messy contradictions of the here-and-now and once again emerge with a creative triumph. This time, they’ve done it with a wistful documentary that looks at what happens inside the hearts of Inuit who move as far from the Arctic as they can get without a passport. It might also be the best Inuit-language documentary ever made.

It’s shaped around the stories of two men living rough in the parks and back alleys of downtown Montreal during the sweltering summer of 2004: Jayson Kunnuk, a young Inuk from Igloolik who co-wrote the script, and Charlie Adams, the renowned singer-songwriter from northern Quebec who went south in 2003 for brief visit and did not return until after a near-fatal accident nearly a year later.

The film also gives us the story of Pitsiulala Lyta, who at 17 moved to Montreal from Iqaluit. Glowing with health and maternal warmth after recovering from her addictions, Pitsiulala, now in her late 30s, works as an outreach worker for the city’s Native Friendship Centre. We meet her while on patrol at John Cabot Park, a well-known hangout for the indigent near Atwater and Saint Catherines.

“I’m proud of my life, my recovery,” Lyta says. Then she weeps a little after talking about how she couldn’t get to her late mother’s funeral in Nunavut. The squall passes and she’s beaming again, reflecting on a recent vacation in Bangkok and her hopes for the future.

Jayson and Charlie wander through downtown Montreal from the Lachine Canal to the foot of Mount Royal, talking about how they got to where they are and what it means to be who they are now. Jayson, asleep on a mattress laid out in an alley, drifts into a scripted dream-sequence that becomes a nostalgic voyage to a lost Eden. We meet his mother, Moatie Kunnuk, and his maternal grandfather, Abraham Ulayuruluk, who talk about the time before government agents compelled them to move to Igloolik.

Charlie Adams and a street buddy fool around by the banks of the Lachine Canal.
Through old snap-shots, we meet Jayson’s late father, Joshua. With tears welling up in his eyes, Jayson tells us what he saw when, at age 12, he watched his father die of an aneurysm while seal hunting. And he remembers his father’s lifelong wish: “When I die I want people to laugh because crying is sad and laughing is happy.”
There’s precious little laughter in Jayson’s story. François Beauchemin, Qallunajatut’s director of photography, makes his subject’s faces fill the screen, revealing ironic hints of unstated inner turmoil. And Jayson’s face rarely breaks into a smile.

Meanwhile, Charlie buys an old guitar, minus a string, from a pawnshop. He re-tunes it, then sits outside a metro station and in his high lonesome voice Charlie plays one of his classics: “Ullumi Isumagasuarpunga,” or ”Today I’m trying to think clearly,” a song Charlie wrote in 1973 about a man stuck in a jail cell.

“I think about people who are going through hard times, trying to feel what they might be going through, whether they are happy or sad,” Charlie says.

It was during the making of Qallunajatut that he suffered the near-fatal accident that created newspaper headlines in the North. While Charlie slept in an alley, a car backed over him twice, rupturing his bowels and crushing his torso. When Jayson visits Charlie in hospital, the older man recounts how it happened with a matter-of-fact stoicism. “My pelvis was split… My intestines came out from under me.”

Strange street characters slip in and out of the film: a gap-toothed woman with an accordion; a leather-clad stoner who invites Jayson to a party, then vanishes; a good-natured little derelict who plays air guitar by the banks of the canal while Adams fools around with an old Johnny Cash song.

Director Jobie Weetaluktuk, with François Beauchemin, the director of photography, and Lynn Trepannier, a sound recordist.
We see Jayson, Charlie and Pitsiulala feasting and dancing at one of the monthly get-togethers organized by the Association of Montreal Inuit. If you’re from Baffin or Nunavik and watch these scenes carefully, you might glimpse faces you haven’t seen for years. It’s a reminder that at least one in every 10 Canadian Inuit now live in southern Canada, raising families and building new communities.
“Inuit don’t think the same way as Qallunaat,” Charlie says. “Inuit thinking seems simple, but it’s not.”

Although we know Pitsiulala Lyta now thrives in the city, the film leaves us wondering what will become of Jayson and Charlie. Jayson moves back in with the Montreal woman he left Igloolik for, saying Charlie’s accident forced him to think about living a better life. As he sits on her back step making a model qamutik, he talks with quiet pride about the hunting skills he learned from his grandfather. Charlie heads to Kuujjuaq for treatment at the Tulattavik hospital, dreams about going fishing near Inukjuak, his original home community, and jokes about a big old fish he’s known about for years. “I know he is still there and some day I will catch him,” he says.

Atarnajuat was, in essence, a preachy film bearing messages about how to live the good life and how to strike a balance between individual desire and community harmony. But Qallunajatut makes no judgments, offers no moral lessons, and makes no political statement. Given how badly Canada’s urban Inuit are ignored by their own governments, that’s a little surprising.

If Qallunajatut has anything to say, it’s this: “We’re Inuit and we’re here. Don’t forget about us.”

Shot during the summer of 2004 in Montreal, Igloolik, and Kuujjuaq, it’s directed by Jobie Weetaluktuk, co-written by Weetaluktuk and Kunnuk, photographed by François Beauchemin of Montreal, and produced by Katarina Soukup. Northern television viewers may see it on Thursday, Nov. 24, at 10 p.m. eastern time, on the APTN network.