A story based on Inuit legend, Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) is the tale of two Inuit brothers’ (Amaqjuaq, the Strong One, and Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner), fight against the forces of an evil order sent to divide their small community twenty years ago. Recently we sat down with director Zacharias Kunuk and producer Norman Cohn to discuss their latest venture Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner). This is what they had to say:
EM: Why did you decide to make this film?NC: We began seventeen years ago as a team of people in a particular community, four individuals. Zacharias, myself, Paul Apak Angilirq who wrote the script for this film, and Paul Qulitalik who was one of our principle actors in the film. We began working together as a collective filmmaking team in order to begin to make professional, independent films from an Inuit point of view by Inuit to preserve and enhance Inuit culture and language and to support the Inuit political objective of getting a better deal in Canada and in the world. This practice started in the mid 1980’s and proceeded step-by-step. We were all trained and experienced filmmakers when we started. We were videomakers when we started and working together we made short dramas then we made a television series. Thirteen half-hours that recreated a fictional year 1945 and eventually reach the point where the next step was to make a feature film. Our sense was that we knew that we were both developing the ability to create programming for Inuit in their own language. Also, to crack into one of the worlds closed systems which is serious money filmmaking and television, which is historically as closed to people of color and native people as the Augusta National Country Club was closed to someone with Tiger Woods skin color until he won their tournament. So we’re system crackers and also Inuit storytellers at the same time. So when we came to the idea of doing a feature we had to decide what story would it be.ZK: It’s a story we all grew up with it when we were children as a bedtime story from our parents amongst other stories that were suppose to teach us how we would want to lead our lives when we grew up. These kind of people this is what happened to them. It was just a lesson for us. It was taught to us, we never forget it. As another story happened in our region, in the Inuit region, you can actually go to places where Natar Ungalaaq sat down, where he ran to, the small island where he was buried. You can actually go to these places. EM: Could you tell me a little bit about the Inuit community?ZK: The community has a four thousand-year history, oral history. Everything was oral. Our town took shape in 1966, churches, stores, health centers. But before that we lived on the land. Every morning our father would go out hunting, hitch his dogs and go. NC: The current town, which has about 1,200 people, was only created in the late 1950’s and early 60’s as part of a Canadian government strategy to move Nomadic Inuit off of traditional land-based lifestyle, where people lived moving from place-to-place in small groups, into permanent settlements. Partly to manage and control them and also partly because the government was feeling the pressure of the Cold War and felt the need to confirm Canadian sovrenty all over the Arctic region, which had always been in dispute between the Russians, the Americans and the Canadians as to who owned these remote islands where no white people lived. So sovrenty was never going to be defined on the backs of nomadic people whose houses melted whenever they walked away from them. So they built these towns. Many of these towns, like many native towns on Indian reservations in the United States, looked like refugee camps. And in a very real sense are refugee camps, which is that people are removed from their normal homeland, which was in that region but never living in a fixed place in wooden houses. Depending on how you interpret the history, but Inuit perceive that their parents and grandparents where forced to come and live in these towns. In some places the police shot dog teams so that Inuit could no longer live on the land.EM: Do you encounter any difficulties making this film?NC: Our difficulties where political. Getting a fair shack in the funding system was difficult. Finding distribution for this film even after we won a huge prize in the Cannes Film Festival was still difficult. We won six Jeanie awards, which are the Canadian Oscars; best picture, best director, best screenplay, best music, best editing and best first director but non of our actors were nominated. Twenty slots, five empty spaces for best actor, five for best actress, five for supporting actor, five for supporting actress. You saw our film. Would you say that none of our actors were among the top twenty performances in Canadian films last year?EM: That’s very hard to comprehend.NC: Those are the obstacles that are difficult.EM: The costumes and props were very detailed and it really was amazing. What type of preparation and research went into keeping the authenticity of the pieces used?ZK: We went over the community radio buying skins. Hired seven or eight women to stitch. They would measure up our actors. Each actor would be measure then the clothes were made. Two sets per person.EM: So everything was handmade.Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) is based off of an Inuit legend passed down from generation to generation by the oral teachings of the Igloolik elders. Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn started this journey seventeen years ago as a labor of love. They wanted to represent the Inuit people in a manor they so richly deserve.By: Tiffany N. D’Emidio