Critical Writing Index

"Atanarjuat" Off-Screen:: From "Media Reservations" to the World Stage

by Faye Ginsburg

American Anthropologist, Dec. 2003, v. 105, no. 4, pp. 827-831

In this piece, Ginsburg relays the obstacles that Zacharias Kunuk's production company Igloolik Isuma faced in the producing of its film Atanarjuat. Canadian arts funding policies are criticised for limiting the potential of indigenous cultural productions as they are situated outside the English/French categories. The international recognition of Atanarjuat provides Inuit youth and community with an example of an Inuit voice that triumphs at large, on the "world stage of cinema" and how Inuit presence in the media can begin to invert the "usual hierarchy of values attached to dominant technologies".

ITEM 2003.140 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)Zacharias Kunuk

The Journals of Knut RasmussenIgloolik Isuma