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February 25, 2011: Screening of « Inuk », in Kalaalisut language, at the Paris Oceanographic Institute
Last October we mentioned the movie Inuk, who had just walked off from the Woodstock Film Festival with both a Best Cinematography Award and a Second Audience Award.
Played by Inuit actors, Inuk has been entirely produced in Kalaalisut, native Greenlandic language. A road-movie on sledge, Inuk was inspired by a true story, that of a sixteen year old lost teenager who leaves the Greenland capital, in the South of the country, to be placed in a home in the remote and frozen North. Away from his broken family life and opening his eyes on the richness of his own Inuit culture, Inuk eventually finds his way through his own identity and returns to peace with existence…
Documentary maker Mike Magidson’s first feature-length film is in full tune with reality: it was shot in an actual youth centre, in Uummannaq, where for over twenty years, Ann Andreasen and Ole Jørgen Hammeken have been welcoming youngsters from all over the country to help them get back on track. And the characters of Inuk and his friends are played by actual residents of Uummannaq Children’s Home.
Inuk will be screened during the opening of the Nuits Polaires cycle taking place over the weekend, February 25 to 27, at the Paris Oceanographic Institute. Mike Magidson and Ole Jørgen Hammeken will be attending the screening, as well as Jean-Michel Huctin, co-author of the scenario (and incidentally author of a Sorosoro blog article on the instruction of languages in Greenland).
Also scheduled along this « polar » weekend: conferences, slide shows, discussions and numerous films, among which the famous Nanook, by Robert Flaherty, and a slide show by photographer Christiane Drieux entitled « With and for the Inughuit, last of the polar Eskimos » (Avec et pour les Inughuit, derniers Esquimaux polaires): an isolated 800 souls community living in the extreme North, in harsh conditions yet in harmony with their environment. They speak Inuktun, a language close to Kalaalisut, of the Eskimo-Aleut family. Nonetheless the Inughuit’s language and a culture bear multiple threats: global warming, gas and oil extraction, international trade regulations…
Full programme available here (French)
Institut Océanographique
195, rue Saint-Jacques
75005 Paris
Free admission for visitors under 15 years old
More on Inuk (screening Friday 25 – 8.30pm):
– Review by Stewart Nusbaumer, journalist at the Huffington Post
– Woodstock Film Festival page and review by critic Thimothy Malcolm, journalist at the Times Herald Record