Isuma series to run nationally starting July 9

ODILE NELSON

The Canadian mainstream has finally embraced Igloolik Isuma Productions, the film company responsible for the award-winning film Atanarjuat – The Fast Runner, after two nationally renowned arts organizations purchased a docudrama series first produced by the company in the mid-1990s.

The Art Gallery of Ontario, which has one of the largest collections of Inuit sculputures and prints in Canada, and Bravo NewStyleArtsChannel, a division of Toronto-based CHUM Television, both recently bought Nunavut Our Land – Zacharias Kunuk’s 13-part series chronicling the life and experiences of Igloolik-area Inuit in the 1940s.

Bravo begins showing the series on July 9. The event is the first time a national broadcaster will air Nunavut Our Land, even though it predates the international success of The Fast Runner by six years.

The AGO, which is undergoing major renovations, hopes to include the series in its Inuit-art exhibit sometime in the near future.

The purchases mark the first national success for the series. Smaller broadcasters such as British Columbia’s Knowledge Network, TelevisionOntario and Television Francais Ontario have all shown episodes of Nunavut. The Aboriginal People’s Television Network showed one cycle of the series in 1999-2000.

Nunavut has also received a warm reception in the international art world. The AGO did a one-time, all-day screening of the series in the late 1990s.

It has been shown by museums and art festivals the world over – including Documenta 11, the world’s premiere contemporary art exhibition.

But until now national broadcasters such as the CBC, the History Channel, and the Discovery Channel have shied away from it.

“It’s long overdue but that seems to be normal for us,” Kunuk said. “I’m glad it’s finally getting out, but we would have been happier if it, when we submitted it to the networks, if they would have picked it up right away but I guess it is better late than never.”

Kunuk, Norm Cohn, the late Paul Apak Angilirq and Paul Qulitalik started Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first Inuit independent film company, in 1990.

But it was not until Atanarjuat received international acclaim, including winning the 2001 Camera d’or for best first feature at the Cannes Film Festival, that the production company won even marginal attention from southern Canada.

Cohn said the box-office success of Atanarjuat, it has grossed more than $3.7 million in North America, may have played a part in convincing Bravo to pick up the series.

“The success of Atanarjuat makes it clear if we don’t fit, it’s not our problem. It’s someone else’s problem,” Cohn said. “We now have, for the first time, mainstream networks recognizing that our work does fit somewhere. That’s a tremendous change for us. And it should not be underestimated that it took us about 18 years to achieve this.”

Prior to the film’s success, Kunuk and the company produced many other short films, including Nunaqpa , in 1991, which tells the story of a family’s summer migration to replace caribou meat stores.

Kunuk filmed the Nunavut Our Land series on video in 1994-1995 with the financial support of a coalition of minor educational broadcasters.

The series dramatizes true stories remembered by the village’s elders. It is made up of 13 30-minute episodes that use modern actors to recreate the life and story of five fictional Inuit families living in the Igloolik region in the 1940s.

The actors speak in Inuktitut, and the series uses English subtitles.