ALFF Creator Talk: Zacharius Kunuk

This event took place on Saturday, Feb. 12, 2022 at 11:00 amonline

This event will be live-streamed over the Eventive platform, participants are encouraged to ask questions through the chat feature. If in-person participation is an option, registrants will be contacted directly to signup to attend.

Born in 1957 in a sod house on Baffin Island, Zacharias Kunuk was a carver in 1981 when he sold three sculptures in Montreal to buy a home-video camera and 27" TV to bring back to Igloolik, Nunavut, a community which had voted twice to refuse access to outside television due to lack of Inuktitut programming. Kunuk co-founded Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc. in 1990 with Paul Apak Angilirq, Pauloosie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn. In addition to the 2001 feature Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, Kunuk has directed more than 30 documentaries and feature films including The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change, Maliglutit (Searchers), and the 7-part documentary series Hunting With My Ancestors. He was also executive producer on SGaawaay K'uuna (Edge of The Knife), the world's first Haida-language feature film which premiered at TIFF last year. In 2019, 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 along with a new live documentary series called Silakut: Live from the Floe Edge which can be viewed and streamed at www.isuma.tv/live.

Attendees of the inaugural Available Light Film festival 2003 were fortunate enough to hear Zacharias speak after two sold-out screenings of Atanrjuat at the Beringia Centre. Zacharias also traveled to Old Crow and Dawson City for screenings and Q&As in those communities. Atanarjuat is available to watch online at ALFF 2022 as part of our ALFF Redux series. Zacharias also has a new award-winning short, Angakusajaujuq: The Shamans’s Apprentice, screening at this year's festival.

Zacharias Kunuk was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2015 and an Officer of the Order of Nunavut in 2019.

This talk will be hosted by Festival Director, Andrew Connors.

Watch a short documentary about Zacharias Kunuk's career produced in 2019 by Telefilm Canada.

Zacharias Kunuk was named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2015 and an Officer of the Order of Nunavut in 2019. Moderated by Anderw Connors.

Join the event here! Admission is pay what you can.