‘My father was born in a spring igloo—half snow, halfskin. I was born in a hospital, with jaundice and two teeth.’With quiet command, the young Inuk artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—14 min of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the past, present and future of Inuit in a radiant new light. Delving into the NFB’s vast archive, she casts a net across the complicated history of Inuit cinematic representation, harvesting fleeting truths and fortuitous accidents from a range of sources—newsreels, propaganda, ethnographic docs, as well as work by Inuit filmmakers. Two Inuit children peer with startling immediacy through a colonial lens. Decades later, other children hastily look away from an intrusive camera. Later still, Asinnajaq’s own grandmother fashions sea lyme grass into a basket, at ease under the tender gaze of documentarian Jobie Weetaluktuk, the director’s father. Asinnajaq fuses contemporary sensibilities with the economic aesthetic of her ancestors, overlaying a quilt of hand-drawn and CGI animation with shimmering fragments of historic moving image.
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