In 1922, Robert J. Flaherty gave us Nanook of the North, one of my favourite silent films and an early example of a snow movie--that is, a movie that wouldn't be what it is without its wintry landscape. In some films, snow is incidental--a pretty backdrop or a minor metaphor (like the snowfall that blankets the Bride's duel with O-Ren Ishii in Kill Bill Vol. I). In others, a snowy climate is central to the story or sometimes even a character in its own right. Here are 10 movies that each use ice, snow, and cold in a specific way; together, they collectively demonstrate the range one symbol can have.
As with a typical Pajiba Guide, many genres are represented (don't worry Nanook fans -- silent film, documentary, and Inuit culture are all covered below in some form). And as with a typical Guide, apologies must be made for omitting many more...
As with a typical Pajiba Guide, many genres are represented (don't worry Nanook fans -- silent film, documentary, and Inuit culture are all covered below in some form). And as with a typical Guide, apologies must be made for omitting many more...
- 2/18/2010
- by Dustin Rowles
Being with Inuit who are experts in living in that environment and learning from them, adapting to their pace and their rhythm, letting the work be influenced by that, accepting that and finding the aesthetic of that relationship to nature, is a great pleasure, a challenge, a learning experience and it is very rewarding. - Before Tomorrow is a stunning and powerful drama set in an Inuit community in 1840 in the Arctic circle, a time when many Inuit had yet to meet white people, and thus maintained their traditional way of life. Based on the novel For Morgendagen by Danish writer Jørn Riel, Ninguiq (co-director Madeline Piujuq Ivalu) and her young grandson Maniq (Paul-Dylan Ivalu) set out to brave the harsh Arctic wilderness to hunt and save food for the upcoming winter. But contact with the outside world brings irrevocable damage to the community, and jeopardizes the future of Ningiuq,...
- 12/13/2009
- IONCINEMA.com
Billed as the third part of a trilogy that began with Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn’s Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and continued with their The Journals Of Knud Rasmussen, the melancholy drama Before Tomorrow features a different writer-director team, but has a look and mood similar to the earlier films. Co-directors Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Piujuq Ivalu (working from a novel by Jørn Riel) follow an Inuit tribe in 1840 as they go about their seasonal rituals of celebration, fishing, and storage, all while whispering among themselves about the strange ways of the white folks that ...
- 12/3/2009
- avclub.com
The last few years has seen a rise in films based on Inuit legends. It all started with Zacharias Kunuk’s much praised The Fast Runner which was followed up with a number of others films (including the beautiful The Journals of Knud Rasmussen which, though based on a true story rather than a legend, beautifully captured Inuit life). Now comes what appears to be the first animated film based on an Inuit legend.
Directed by Nancy Savard, Sarila is the story of three Inuit children on a journey to save their clan. It takes place in an Inuit encampment threatened by famine. The tribe's shaman can't find a solution to the lack of food but the tribe's wise woman recalls the legend of Sarila, a land hidden amongst the glaciers which is said to be plentiful but only open to those of pure heart; enter the children who are...
Directed by Nancy Savard, Sarila is the story of three Inuit children on a journey to save their clan. It takes place in an Inuit encampment threatened by famine. The tribe's shaman can't find a solution to the lack of food but the tribe's wise woman recalls the legend of Sarila, a land hidden amongst the glaciers which is said to be plentiful but only open to those of pure heart; enter the children who are...
- 11/19/2009
- QuietEarth.us
TORONTO -- The world premiere of Fugitive Pieces, the latest work from Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa, will launch the The Toronto International Film Festival 32nd edition, organizers said Thursday.
Podeswa's third feature, following Eclipse and The Five Senses, tells the story of a man haunted by his childhood experiences during the Holocaust, who eventually finds solace and love in Toronto.
The drama was shot last year in Greece and Canada at a cost of $9.5 million.
The choice follows in the tradition of Toronto selecting a homegrown director to launch the festival before star-driven Hollywood releases and other high-profile international entries take center stage.
Last year, Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's opening-night film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, had a bit of it's thunder stolen when projection problems halted the midnight world premiere of Larry Charles' Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Despite the snafu, the Sacha Baron Cohen-starring comedy from 20th Century Fox became the most-hyped movie of Toronto in 2006.
Podeswa's third feature, following Eclipse and The Five Senses, tells the story of a man haunted by his childhood experiences during the Holocaust, who eventually finds solace and love in Toronto.
The drama was shot last year in Greece and Canada at a cost of $9.5 million.
The choice follows in the tradition of Toronto selecting a homegrown director to launch the festival before star-driven Hollywood releases and other high-profile international entries take center stage.
Last year, Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's opening-night film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, had a bit of it's thunder stolen when projection problems halted the midnight world premiere of Larry Charles' Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
Despite the snafu, the Sacha Baron Cohen-starring comedy from 20th Century Fox became the most-hyped movie of Toronto in 2006.
- 5/11/2007
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Tuesday stirred up controversy by releasing a Top 10 list of Canadian movies for 2006 that left out this year's top two domestic boxoffice earners.
The 2006 list, voted on by selected Canadian filmmakers, producers and critics, includes Mike Clattenburg's Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, a popcorn comedy executive produced by Ivan Reitman about ex-convicts in a Halifax trailer park complex.
The 2006 list also includes Sarah Polley's Away From Her, Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which opened the 2006 Toronto festival, and Jennifer Baichwal's Manufactured Landscapes, a feature-length documentary.
But this year's kudos ignored Erik Canuel's Bon Cop, Bad Cop, a bilingual buddy movie that earlier this year became the highest-ever Canadian boxoffice earner. Also passed over was the year's second-highest grosser, Christophe Gans' video game-inspired horror pic Silent Hill, a Canada/France co-production shot in Ontario and produced by Don Carmody and Samuel Hadida.
Toronto-based Carmody said leaving his own film and Bon Cop, Bad Cop off the 2006 Top 10 showed that the 10-member jury was out of step with the tastes of ordinary Canadian cinemagoers.
The 2006 list, voted on by selected Canadian filmmakers, producers and critics, includes Mike Clattenburg's Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, a popcorn comedy executive produced by Ivan Reitman about ex-convicts in a Halifax trailer park complex.
The 2006 list also includes Sarah Polley's Away From Her, Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which opened the 2006 Toronto festival, and Jennifer Baichwal's Manufactured Landscapes, a feature-length documentary.
But this year's kudos ignored Erik Canuel's Bon Cop, Bad Cop, a bilingual buddy movie that earlier this year became the highest-ever Canadian boxoffice earner. Also passed over was the year's second-highest grosser, Christophe Gans' video game-inspired horror pic Silent Hill, a Canada/France co-production shot in Ontario and produced by Don Carmody and Samuel Hadida.
Toronto-based Carmody said leaving his own film and Bon Cop, Bad Cop off the 2006 Top 10 showed that the 10-member jury was out of step with the tastes of ordinary Canadian cinemagoers.
- 12/12/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
TORONTO -- Using the Internet to deliver movies will open up the vast Canadian north to a new moviegoing market, domestic distributor Isuma Distribution International Inc. said Tuesday.
Backed by federal government investment, Montreal-based Isuma plans to create a permanent digital exhibition circuit in northern Canada, using the Internet to deliver film for theatrical projection to far-flung aboriginal communities.
Eliminating the studio middlemen that rarely distribute movies beyond a ribbon of urban markets running along the Canada-U.S. border, IDI will launch the Indigenous Film Network with the release today Nov. 22 in Nunavat of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the Inuit-language period drama by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn that opened the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
"Our film is not about the past, it's about what's happening today. How did we get into this mess in the first place and how can we ever get out of it? All indigenous people have a right to see this film to help figure out what to do about it," Kunuk said in a statement about his film's northern Canadian bow this week.
Backed by federal government investment, Montreal-based Isuma plans to create a permanent digital exhibition circuit in northern Canada, using the Internet to deliver film for theatrical projection to far-flung aboriginal communities.
Eliminating the studio middlemen that rarely distribute movies beyond a ribbon of urban markets running along the Canada-U.S. border, IDI will launch the Indigenous Film Network with the release today Nov. 22 in Nunavat of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the Inuit-language period drama by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn that opened the Toronto International Film Festival in September.
"Our film is not about the past, it's about what's happening today. How did we get into this mess in the first place and how can we ever get out of it? All indigenous people have a right to see this film to help figure out what to do about it," Kunuk said in a statement about his film's northern Canadian bow this week.
- 11/21/2006
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
TORONTO -- For their follow-up to the art house favorite Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), filmmaking team Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn have returned to Inuit lore from a different angle, making a film that is at once more accessible and less transporting than its predecessor. It's unlikely to connect with as wide an art-film audience as Atanarjuat, but it does have crossover appeal for hard-core fans of ethnographic documentary.
Where Atanarjuat planted viewers in the middle of an Inuit legend, forcing them to piece the tale together from verite-style sequences, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is mediated by the writings of a Westerner who traveled the Arctic in the 1920s. While the filmmakers forgo any sort of narration, the viewer's perspective is largely the same Rasmussen's while he interviews the members of a small Inuit band.
Arriving in a community led by the shaman Avva (Pakak Innuksuk), the Greenland-raised Rasmussen explains that he speaks their language because his grandmother was Inuit. While his traveling partner comes in hopes of trade, Rasmussen simply wants to hear the tribe's beliefs and stories.
For much of the next two hours, that is exactly what we get. In one extremely long take, Avva explains how he survived his birth despite a curse on his mother, how he grew up as an almost feared outsider and how he came to his role as shaman. The elder tells the story like a metronome, pausing between sentences and displaying little emotion. "Happy people should not worry about hidden things," he says, and his matter-of-fact account of such mysterious events conveys something of the group's relationship to the spiritual world.
Avva's daughter Apak (Leah Angutimarik) has a different interaction with that world, one that makes her father uneasy: A widow who has been forced to remarry, she spends hours of reverie "having sex with a dead man." In a break from the documentary feel of the rest of the film, these moments are shot in an expressionistic blur, as the kind of rapture a father might rightly fear would tear his daughter out of the material world.
We eventually learn that the group has migrated from its village after a split with neighbors who were converted to Christianity. As the Greenlanders convince Avva and company to lead them back to that outpost, the movie -- which until now has been like a once-removed ethnographic document -- becomes a poignant and almost eerie look at a people whose ancient beliefs are being challenged by white newcomers. By the time they reach their destination, the travelers have used up their food; it's understood that their old neighbors won't be very hospitable to anyone who doesn't come sing about Jesus with them, leaving Avva with a heartbreaking decision to make.
Like Atanarjuat, Journals is not built for the average moviegoer. Its takes are long, its compositions generally claustrophobic and its stories slow to emerge. But it also offers moments of humor, like a bit of frank teasing between Apak and a former lover, and glimpses of things -- the construction of an igloo, for instance -- not often seen in movies. Not every admirer of the first film will enjoy it, but it values its subjects too much to mold their rhythms to an outsider's attention span.
THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN
Igloolik Isuma Prods.
Credits:
Director-ccreenwriters: Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn
Producers: Norman Cohn, Zacharias Kunuk, Vibeke Vogel, Elise Lund Larsen
Director of photography: Norman Cohn
Production designers: Zacharias Kunuk, Louis Uttak
Costume designers: Micheline Ammaq, Atuat Akkitirq, Mary Qulitalik, Susan Avingaq
Editors: Norman Cohn, Cathrine Ambus, Felix Lajeunesse
Cast:
Apak: Leah Angutimarik
Avva: Pakak Innuksuk
Orulu: Neeve Irngaut
Nuqallac: Natar Ungalaaq
Umik: Samuelie Ammaq
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 112 minutes...
Where Atanarjuat planted viewers in the middle of an Inuit legend, forcing them to piece the tale together from verite-style sequences, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is mediated by the writings of a Westerner who traveled the Arctic in the 1920s. While the filmmakers forgo any sort of narration, the viewer's perspective is largely the same Rasmussen's while he interviews the members of a small Inuit band.
Arriving in a community led by the shaman Avva (Pakak Innuksuk), the Greenland-raised Rasmussen explains that he speaks their language because his grandmother was Inuit. While his traveling partner comes in hopes of trade, Rasmussen simply wants to hear the tribe's beliefs and stories.
For much of the next two hours, that is exactly what we get. In one extremely long take, Avva explains how he survived his birth despite a curse on his mother, how he grew up as an almost feared outsider and how he came to his role as shaman. The elder tells the story like a metronome, pausing between sentences and displaying little emotion. "Happy people should not worry about hidden things," he says, and his matter-of-fact account of such mysterious events conveys something of the group's relationship to the spiritual world.
Avva's daughter Apak (Leah Angutimarik) has a different interaction with that world, one that makes her father uneasy: A widow who has been forced to remarry, she spends hours of reverie "having sex with a dead man." In a break from the documentary feel of the rest of the film, these moments are shot in an expressionistic blur, as the kind of rapture a father might rightly fear would tear his daughter out of the material world.
We eventually learn that the group has migrated from its village after a split with neighbors who were converted to Christianity. As the Greenlanders convince Avva and company to lead them back to that outpost, the movie -- which until now has been like a once-removed ethnographic document -- becomes a poignant and almost eerie look at a people whose ancient beliefs are being challenged by white newcomers. By the time they reach their destination, the travelers have used up their food; it's understood that their old neighbors won't be very hospitable to anyone who doesn't come sing about Jesus with them, leaving Avva with a heartbreaking decision to make.
Like Atanarjuat, Journals is not built for the average moviegoer. Its takes are long, its compositions generally claustrophobic and its stories slow to emerge. But it also offers moments of humor, like a bit of frank teasing between Apak and a former lover, and glimpses of things -- the construction of an igloo, for instance -- not often seen in movies. Not every admirer of the first film will enjoy it, but it values its subjects too much to mold their rhythms to an outsider's attention span.
THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN
Igloolik Isuma Prods.
Credits:
Director-ccreenwriters: Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn
Producers: Norman Cohn, Zacharias Kunuk, Vibeke Vogel, Elise Lund Larsen
Director of photography: Norman Cohn
Production designers: Zacharias Kunuk, Louis Uttak
Costume designers: Micheline Ammaq, Atuat Akkitirq, Mary Qulitalik, Susan Avingaq
Editors: Norman Cohn, Cathrine Ambus, Felix Lajeunesse
Cast:
Apak: Leah Angutimarik
Avva: Pakak Innuksuk
Orulu: Neeve Irngaut
Nuqallac: Natar Ungalaaq
Umik: Samuelie Ammaq
No MPAA rating
Running time -- 112 minutes...
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival got off to a brave start Thursday night with the kickoff gala screening of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, a Inuktitut- and Danish-language drama about Canada's Inuit people being stripped of their traditions by Christianity. Business also got under way as IFC First Take announced it has picked up all North American distribution rights to ... So Goes the Nation, a documentary uncovering election manipulation in Ohio during the 2004 U.S. presidential race. Nation is scheduled to have its world premiere at the festival Thursday. At the fest's opening, the strains of native throat-singing and drum-beating opened the proceedings at Roy Thomson Hall as co-directors Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn introduced a cast of unknown Inuit actors to about 4,000 guests.
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival got off to a brave start Thursday night with the kickoff gala screening of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, a Inuktitut- and Danish-language drama about Canada's Inuit people being stripped of their traditions by Christianity. Business also got under way as IFC First Take announced it has picked up all North American distribution rights to ... So Goes the Nation, a documentary uncovering election manipulation in Ohio during the 2004 U.S. presidential race. Nation is scheduled to have its world premiere at the festival Thursday. At the fest's opening, the strains of native throat-singing and drum-beating opened the proceedings at Roy Thomson Hall as co-directors Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn introduced a cast of unknown Inuit actors to about 4,000 guests.
TORONTO -- Before Zacharias Kunuk opens the Toronto International Film Festival on Thursday with The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, the film's director, Norman Cohn, is set to lock horns with the federal government over financing a northern Canadian tour for the Inuit- and Danish-language epic drama. Cohn is to meet Thursday in Toronto with Wayne Clarkson, executive director of Telefilm Canada, the federal government's film financier, with an eye to ending a stalemate over financing the northern tour. Both Telefilm Canada and Cohn say there has been progress during earlier negotiations, but still no deal. Ralph Holt, Telefilm Canada's director of operations, Ontario and Nunavut, has so far found about $30,000 to cover distribution expenses. "There's no question that we would not do this. We're interested in seeing this film screened to those about whom it is about," Holt said ahead of Thursday's crunch meeting.
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday said the world premiere of Canadian Inuit- and Danish-language film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen will open its 31st edition Sept. 7. The gala opening-night film from directors Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn is the follow-up to the duo's 2001 Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, a film based on an ancient Inuit legend that won the Camera d'Or for best first feature at Cannes before going on to win critical acclaim and surprise boxoffice success. The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, a Canadian-Denmark co-production, explores the history of the Inuit people in Canada's Arctic north by portraying the encroachment of Christian European influence on the community of Igloolik.
TORONTO -- The Toronto International Film Festival on Wednesday said the world premiere of Canadian Inuit- and Danish-language film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen will open its 31st edition Sept. 7. The gala opening-night film from directors Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn is the follow-up to the duo's 2001 Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, a film based on an ancient Inuit legend that won the Camera d'Or for best first feature at Cannes before going on to win critical acclaim and surprise boxoffice success. The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, a Canadian-Denmark co-production, explores the history of the Inuit people in Canada's Arctic north by portraying the encroachment of Christian European influence on the community of Igloolik.
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