Houston scouting for Inuk film editor

PATRICIA D’SOUZA

Filmmaker John Houston wrapped up production on the Arctic portion of the third film in his trilogy this month, and is looking to hire a talented Inuk to help with the editing.

The film, Diet of Souls, is the final piece in a trilogy that began with Songs in Stone and Nuliajuk. It concerns the relationship between Inuit and animals in a more direct way than the other two films.

“There’s a gorgeous scene in Kugaaruk where a woman is carving a little seal in ivory, and just the loving way she turns it over in her hand and the way she looks at it when it’s finished and she kind of shows it to us and there’s just no need for words,” Houston said during an interview last week at the Discovery Lodge in Iqaluit.

“It’s just so beautiful.”

A large part of the shooting centred around hunting. In the Netsilik area of Nunavut, it centred around seal hunting in particular.

One scene focuses on an eight-year-old boy crouched over a seal hole with his grandfather.

“He was kind of shifting his feet around a bit too much, so the seals were sort of coming up and getting scared away. So the story ended up that the elder himself actually stood over the seal hole and got a seal in very short order,” Houston said.

“Then he brings the seal home and cooks it up and has lunch. The little boy, who didn’t actually get the seal this time, came to lunch, and the grandfather says to him, and I’ll never forget this, he says in Inuktitut, ‘I want you to know that you didn’t get a seal this year and that’s OK. Next year we’re going to try again and if you don’t get a seal next year, then the year after we’re going to try again. I’m never going to give up on you.'”

As the film moves on to the editing stage, Houston is scouting the territory for the ideal Inuk to fill the position of assistant editor.

“We would be in a dark room with that person for months,” he said. “Someone who’s strong on story, someone who has editing skills, or it could be some kind of equivalent skills. I don’t want to limit this. It’s not as much technical as I want the right kind of mind.

“I want the right kind of person who when we say we’re looking for material that relates to a certain aspect of this, the kind of person who would say, ‘Well, remember what Aupilarjuk said…’ and whip open the transcript and say, ‘What about that?'”

Houston expects the editing process to last about five months and be competed by January. The piece will probably air in the spring on Vision TV, and later on APTN and the Independent Film Channel.