Inuit film shines at Sundance festival

Earlier this month at, Sundance – the prestigious film festival of independent films started by actor Robert Redford in 1978 – a special program of Canadian aboriginal shorts featured Elisapie Isaac’s award-winning short documentary, If the weather permits or, in French, Si le temps le permet.

Isaac, 26, who grew up in Salluit, travelled to Utah to see her the film screened at the Sundance festival.

“I went there without any expectations at all,” Isaac said in a telephone from Montreal, where she now lives. “My film was shown three times and I was there the second night. There was a very good reaction. A lady, a filmmaker, from Fiji, came up to me and she had almost tears in her eyes, and she said, ‘I feel the same way.’ People were thanking me.”

Isaac’s highly personal film recounts the difficulties Inuit communities are having as they try to bridge their traditional culture with modern culture. It tells the story of two residents from Kangiqsujuaq – Naalak Naptaaluk, an elder, and Danny Alaku, a young police officer.

In 2001, Isaac won a National Film Board of Canada First Nations Filmmaker Award worth about $200,000, which allowed her to spend nearly a year learning about filmmaking and producing the documentary.

Last summer, her film won the Rigoberta Menchu Tum Grand Prize at the 13th annual First People’s Festival in Montreal.

The NFB distributes the film. “Hopefully they’ll be some interest. It’s a very big exposure,” she said.

Isaac, who also has an up and coming career as a singer, will be releasing an album in February.

But she said she’d also like to work on a shorter film.

“I’m in the mood for something simple, just to experiment. So I want to do something lighter that will make people laugh, or cry, with joy,” Isaac said.