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The phenomenal success of the first-ever Inuit feature film Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner (2001) has many dramatic stories behind it since it was first imagined in 1995. There is, of course, the Inuit legend on which the film's narrative is based. Beyond that, and of particular significance to anthropologists, are the stories of the off-screen "media worlds" (Ginsburg et al. 2002) that enabled this film to be made, starting with the community-based Inuit production company, Igloolik Isuma,1 founded in 1991 by Igloolik residents Zacharaias Kunuk (Atanarjuat's director), with the late Paul Apak Angilirq, Pauloosie Qulitalik, and Norman Cohn (see Huhndorf this issue). But the story of Isuma is not only about creating media that involve and address Inuit subjects and deploy their creative talents, it is also about indigenous advocacy. Aboriginal cultural activists, and members of Igloolik Isuma in particular, have been important players in transforming the political economy and cultural policies that shape indigenous media in Canada, as the circulation of this work oscillates between local communities, the nation, and the world stage. Productions such as Atanarjuat are key sites for contemporary Aboriginal "culture-making" in a number of arenas (Myers 1994), reimagining the space of indigineity by creating wlial some have called "visual sovereignly" (Rickard 1995).
The following excerpts from Kunuk's two-page 1998 application to the Guggenheim Foundation give a succinct glimpse into his prescient understanding of the potential "multiplier effects" imagined for this film three years into its conceptual life.
How can we bring our ancient art of storytelling into the new millennium? How can we unlock the silence of our elders before they all pass away? How can we save our youth from reacting to the death of history by killing themselves? . . .
My project is Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. With my artist partners-Paul Apak, Paulossie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn, and with sixty Inuit from our community as cast and crew, we bring one of our most ancient legends from our oral history into the next millennium through video art and TV. We will show Inuit and non-Inuit how we lived, how our ancestors survived through the healing power of community and how Inuit art can endure for another 1000 years.
Atanarjuat will reach Inuit youth and give them hope....