Inuuvunga teens put their world on movie screen

“The kids are kids, but they saw a lot of things that troubled them”

To experience how teenagers see the world, you’ll want to watch Inuuvunga, a one-hour documentary conceived and filmed by a group of high school students in Inukjuak.

The film, whose title means “I am Inuk, I am Alive” in English, takes an uncensored look at life through the eyes of Inukjuak teenagers, Dora and Rita-Lucy Ohaituk, Caroline Ningiuk, Willia Ningeok, Sarah Idlout, Laura Iqaluk, Linus Kasudluak and Bobby Echalook, who were participants in a National Film Board outreach project.

The NFB program taught filmmaking to the eight teens who were guided by two award-winning independent filmmakers, Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin. Pierre Lapointe produced the film for the NFB.

The result of their collaboration is a bittersweet testament to the beauty, boredom, pain and hope of coming to age in today’s North. It’s a touching and heart-wrenching journey through lives caught between two worlds: Southern culture and traditional Inuit values.

The teens welcomed Cross and Aung-Thwin to lead filmmaking workshops as they entered their last year of high school at Innalik School.

The filmmakers’ aim was to provide participants with the basic skills and equipment to help them document this pivotal year in their young lives.

The production followed a wave of suicides in the community.

As a result, says Aung-Thwin, the kids wanted to have something that wasn’t solely problem-oriented or focused on suicide.

“One of their complaints was that people only came into their community when there was a suicide,” Aung-Thwin says.

The kids decided to show their lives over the course of the year.

“They didn’t want to make an issue-based film, but the issues kept on cropping up. I guess there was a struggle throughout the whole thing to keep a balance,” Aung-Twin says. “And the film is kind of a balance. The kids are kids, but they saw a lot of things that troubled them.”

So, what do you end up if you put a camera in the hands of a teenager in Inukjuak?

First, you get a film filled with interesting angles, odd lighting and jerky movements, looking at subjects in unusual and off-the-wall ways.

Camera in hand, Willia Ningeok shows us his room and explains how bored he is, while Linus Kasudluak films his house late at night and shows members of his family as they lie fast asleep.

The film runs the gamut of emotions: there’s irony and humour in a sequence about a mock fox-hunting trip, sadness and grief when the loss of friends to suicide is revisited, surprising moments of tension between elders and youth as well as love and warmth between grandparents, parents and children.

The film shows the surrounding community of Inukjuak as a place with “not much to, nowhere to go,” where the airport is “the only place to leave town” and “even elders disregard stop signs.”

But when one camera catches the crunchy sound and sight of frigid snow or another shoots the traditional New Years Eve snowmobile parade, Inukjuak looks and sounds beautiful.

The film also follows the kids on a class trip to Montreal.

The young filmmakers tried to explore the schism between old and young, and Aung-Thwin says it was “important that they figure it out.”

Some of the most interesting sequences in Inuuvunga take place when young and old face off. Bobby Echalook questions his grandfather who is taken off guard by the exchange. A mother-daughter conversation about adoption reveals a deep affection between Anna and Rita-Lucy Ohaituk.

One girl wanted to do a short film about gambling in the community, but found no one wanted to talk to her.

During a kamik-making session, the girls managed to bring up the subject of the suicide with older women present.

“Investigative journalism was a foreign concept,” Aung-Thwin says. “So, they sort of had to find a medium between rustling feathers and making a two way exchange about the issue.”

Inuuvunga premiered in Ottawa on National Aboriginal Day, with all the Inukjuak participants and filmmakers in attendance.

Films can be ordered from the NFB, by calling 1-800-267-7710. It’s been shown in Inukjuak and will also be aired on television in Canada and abroad.