Zacharias Kunuk (Inuk)
CYCLE: CICLO LA TIERRA ES NUESTRA ALMA
TITLE: ONE DAY IN THE LIFE OF NOAH PIUGATTUK
Zacharias Kunuk, OC, ON, is a filmmaker, sculptor and visual artist based in Iglulik (Igloolik), NU. Kunuk has redefined filmmaking in Canada and is at the forefront of innovative broadcast technology in the North. He is perhaps best known for his first feature film Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner) (2001), the first Canadian feature film produced entirely in Inuktitut. The groundbreaking film won six Genie Awards and was ranked the number one Canadian film of all time in a 2015 poll conducted by the Toronto International Film Festival. He is co-founder of Isuma Productions, the first Inuit-led independent film production company in Canada. In 2019, Kunuk and Isuma Productions represented Canada at the 58th Venice Biennale with their film A Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (2019).
SYPNOSIS
In April 1961, John Kennedy is the new President of the United States, the Cold War escalates in Berlin and nuclear bombers are deployed from bases in the Canadian Arctic. In Kapuivik, north of Baffin Island, Noah Piugattuk’s group of Inuit nomads live and hunt with a team of dogs as his ancestors did when he was born in 1900. When the white man known as Chief arrives at Piugattuk’s hunting camp, what appears to be a chance encounter soon opens up as an opportunity for momentous change. Chief is a government agent, assigned to move the Piugattuk group to a settlement and send their children to school so they can get jobs and make money. But Kapuivik is Piugattuk’s home. He is not involved in the Canadian experience; and he can’t imagine what his children would do with the money.
