Inuuvunga - I Am Inuk, I Am Alive

Hockey, hip hop, hunting and midnight Ski-Doo rides. Welcome to Inukjuak. It's the final year of high school for eight teens at Innalik school in this remote town in northern Quebec. Through an initiative of the National Film Board, these eight students have been selected to document this pivotal year of their lives. To teach them some basics, the NFB has dispatched filmmakers Daniel Cross and Mila Aung-Thwin. The result of their collaboration is Inuuvunga, a vibrant and utterly contemporary view of life in Canada's North. The students use their new film skills to address a broad range of issues, from the widening communication gap with their elders to the loss of their peers to suicide. Throughout, they reveal an unusual and fascinating mix of southern and northern cultures. Kids listen to hip-hop music and engage in traditional fox trapping. A schoolroom floor is the scene of the gutting of a freshly killed seal. Seamless and startling, Inuuvunga paints a rich portrait of coming of age in an Inuit town and helps to dispel the myths of northern isolation and desolation. Instead, we discover a place where hope and strength overcome struggle.

Huit adolescents de l'école Innalik à Inukjuak, village situé tout au nord du Québec, au Nunavik, en sont à leur dernière année de secondaire. Grâce à un projet de l'Office national du film du Canada, ces huit jeunes ont été sélectionnés pour documenter cette année charnière de leur vie. Dépêchés par l'ONF, les cinéastes Daniel Cross et Mila Aung-Thwin sont chargés de leur enseigner les rudiments du cinéma. Le fruit de leur collaboration est Inuuvunga - Je suis Inuk. Je suis vivant, portrait vibrant et tout à fait contemporain de la vie dans le nord canadien. Mettant leurs nouvelles connaissances à profit, les étudiants réalisent un document saisissant dans lequel ils abordent une vaste gamme de sujets allant de l'érosion graduelle du dialogue avec les aînés au suicide chez les jeunes. Ce faisant, ils révèlent un tiraillement fascinant entre les cultures du sud et du nord. Les jeunes dansent au son de la musique hip-hop, mais perpétuent les méthodes de chasse ancestrales en s'adonnant au piégeage du renard. La classe devient même un laboratoire où ils apprennent à éviscérer un phoque qui vient d'être tué. Honnête et étonnant, Inuuvunga trace le tableau complexe du passage à l'âge adulte dans un village inuit. Il aide à démythifier l'isolation et la désolation associées au Grand Nord et nous fait découvrir un endroit où dominent plutôt la force et l'espoir. En anglais avec sous-titres français.

In her film Angry Inuk, Inuk director Alethea Arnaquq-Baril joins a new tech-savvy generation of Inuit as they campaign to challenge long-established perceptions of seal hunting. Though most commercial sealing is conducted by Inuit in the Arctic, anti-sealing activism has created a perception of the industry that denies their central role in the sealskin market. To reinsert themselves into the international discussion, these Inuit activists must inconvenience the fundraising campaigns of animal groups by using all the tricks in the social media book, and invent some of their own along the way, like "sealfies." Seal meat is a staple food for Inuit, and many of the pelts are sold to offset the extraordinary cost of hunting. Inuit are spread across extensive lands and waters, and their tiny population is faced with a disproportionate responsibility for protecting the environment. They are pushing for a sustainable way to take part in the global economy, but in opposition stands an army of well-funded activists and well-meaning celebrities. Arnaquq-Baril and her cameras travel through the Canadian Arctic, giving voice to the people the animal activists rarely bother to meet: the hunters, the craftspeople, the families for whom the seal hunt is a critical part of their livelihood and survival. She follows a group of students to Europe, where they plead the Inuit case before a European Union panel. The film interweaves the reality of Inuit life with the story of their challenge to both the anti-sealing industry and those nations that mine resources on Inuit lands while simultaneously destroying the main sustainable economy available to the people who live there. As one student said, "We need to stop the cultural prejudice that is imposed on us by not being allowed to benefit from our natural surroundings without having to drill into the ground. And that's really all we want as a people.".