Zacharias Kunuk
Zacharias KUNUK (1957, Kapuivik near Igloolik) is a sculptor and filmmaker. In 1981, Kunuk sold three sculptures in Montreal and brought home to Igloolik the Arctic’s first video camera. He is president and co-founder of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first Inuit-owned independent production company, for which he has made several short films and documentaries. He won the Camera d’Or at Cannes in 2001 for his first feature film, Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner. Since then, Kunuk has directed more than 30 documentaries and feature films. Last year, Kunuk, Cohn and the Isuma Collective were chosen to represent Canada at the 58th Biennale di Venezia with One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk as its main video installation.
Filmography
(selection) Qaggiq/Gathering Place (1989, short), Nunaqpa/Going Inland (1991, short), Saputi/Fish Traps (1993, short), Nunavut/Our Land (1995, short series), Arviq!/Bowhead (1998, doc), Nipi/Voice (1999, doc), Nanugiurutiga/My First Bear (2000, doc), Atanarjuat, The Fast Runner (2001), Kunuk Family Reunion (2004), The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006), Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change (2008), My Father’s Land (2014), Maliglutit – Searchers (2016), One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk (2019)
Zacharias Kunuk at IFFR
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Our Land – Episode 6 (Stalking)
Two dog teams search the Spring ice, men and boys hunt day and night. There are seals everywhere.
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The Journals of Knud Rasmussen
The makers of Atanarjuat , The Fast Runner (2001) portray the encounter that took place in 1922 between the Greenland explorer Knud Rasmussen and a
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One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk
In 1961, Canadian Inuit were told they had to relinquish their nomadic lives. Powerful film shot by Inuit people on the endless snowfields.
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Our Land – Episode 5 (Home)
Igloolik, Autumn 1945. In which Akkitiq wakes up and sees that it’s a lovely day for a seal hunt.
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Our Land – Episode 3 (Stone House)
In which five families build a stone house to prepare for the coming winter.
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Our Land – Episode 7 (Seal Pups)
Young seals: a spring delicacy, praised for their soft fur and tender meat.
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Fish Traps
Near Igloolik in the 1930s, a summer comes to its end. Three families build a saputi, with which they catch fish swimming upstream for the winter.<
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Our Land – Episode 13 (Happy Day)
Christmas, 1946: with lots of meat and warm shelter against the biting cold, it’s a great time for parties and storytelling.
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My First Polar Bear
Young Joshua Kunuk is taken on his first polar-bear hunt, to see the hunt itself, the skinning and cutting up of the bear.The boy’s grandfath
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Going Inland
Summer, 1930s: for Igloolik Inuit, this is the time for nunaqpa, the long quest for fattened summer caribou, to catch enough meat for the gruelling