Nunavut Film chooses a new director

GREG YOUNGER-LEWIS

Nunavut’s burgeoning film industry will soon boom bigger and better while bringing more international dollars to the local economy, according to the territory’s new film chief.

Last week, Sheila Pokiak took over as head of Nunavut Film, the commission created by the territorial government over a year ago to help fund local movie-making.

While the commission acts as a patron to Nunavut filmmakers, Nunavut Film’s Iqaluit office will also attract more outside interest in the territory through labour subsidies for “off-shore” companies, namely any film business outside Nunavut.

“The commission has an opportunity to help film showcase Nunavut to the world,” Pokiak said. “We will … affirm our place in the world, being one of beauty and landscape.”

Pokiak has her sights set high. In the coming years, she wants to create a finely tuned network of industry contacts in Nunavut to make business easier for local film companies, and production teams coming from abroad.

Even Nunavummiut currently outside the film industry will benefit, she said. Besides actors and production crew, all companies will need support services like catering, hotels, and logistical coordinators.

“Film has economic benefits for anyone in a support role, outside cast and crew,” Pokiak said.

She said the time is ripe to develop Nunavut’s potential for filmmaking since it took off when Igloolik Isuma Productions released the world-acclaimed feature film, Atanarjuat, more than three years ago. Isuma is currently working on their follow-up, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which already received $200,000 from the commission.

But, for Pokiak, the bustle around Nunavut films shouldn’t be limited to established filmmakers.

She hopes to see a “healthy variety” of applicants for the remaining funds for this fiscal year. This includes new artists working in various media forms, including the Internet, documentaries, and video.

Pokiak, 29, has seen both the modest and star-studded sides of film production. In the late 1990s, she studied at the Native Theatre School, north of Toronto, and produced a number of shows for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

Then, she got her first big break. Pokiak remembers she was so excited she couldn’t hear, when she got a call from Gary Farmer, a famous aboriginal actor-producer from the movies Smoke Signals and Dead Man. He needed a producer for APTN’s Buffalo Tracks.

When the show was done, Farmer told Pokiak to go into film.

Now, Pokiak is finishing the final edits on her own film, Stone Butterfly, a movie she wrote, directed and produced, about the daughter of a residential school survivor.

“Filmmaking is a lot of fun, it’s creative,” Pokiak said. “And it’s good to release one’s creativeness out there.”

Before moving to Iqaluit, Pokiak led an independent filmmakers collective in Ottawa, where she helped small-scale businesses find grants and equipment to put out their own productions.

Pokiak says she’s excited to be living up north, both for the job, and so her eight-year-old son, Joshua, can be closer to his mother’s roots.

Pokiak’s family comes from Tuktoyaktuk, but she mainly grew up in Nunavik and southern Canada. Although Pokiak doesn’t speak Inuktitut, she’s already found a teacher, and plans to learn.

Pokiak said her most pressing task right now is to extend the deadline for this year’s grant applicants past this month. For information, phone the Iqaluit office at 979-3012.