Post by Okwes on Dec 19, 2006 12:47:37 GMT -5
Falling Forward Into an Icy World
By MAURIE ALIOFF
Published: November 19, 2006
www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/movies/19alio.html?ex=1164517200&en=82\
965b595b7d1afa&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/movies/19alio.html?ex=1164517200&en=8\
2965b595b7d1afa&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS>
WHEN "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen"
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=353038&inline=nyt\
_ttl> screens at the Native American Film and Video Festival in New
York on Nov. 30, it will narrow the time and space gap between
contemporary Manhattan and the Canadian Arctic of the 1920s. But viewers
will need to accept the challenge of crossing the spiritual gulf
separating them from this drama's Inuit subjects.
Enlarge This Image
[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/11/19/arts/19alio.190.jpg]
Reuters
Zacharias Kunuk, co-director of "The Journals of Knud
Rasmussen."
"You have to fall forward into our world," suggested Norman
Cohn, the New York-born filmmaker who wrote and directed the movie with
Zacharias Kunuk, a native of the Arctic. "You're not going to be
made to look stupid. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Why not jump
in?"
In creating this unconventional film, Mr. Cohn and Mr. Kunuk were driven
by one purpose: getting the complexities of the native experience right.
Drawn from the observations of Knud Rasmussen, a Danish
adventurer-anthropologist who was part Inuit, "The Journals"
portrays a 1922 contact between Rasmussen, played by the Danish actor
Jens Jorn Spottag, and a people whose shamanism was then being undercut
by Christian missionaries. As their cheerful worldview crumbled, the
Inuit, as portrayed by the filmmakers, were drawn into an unaccustomed
darkness of the soul.
"When Christianity came, all the spirits that we believed in became
evil," Mr. Kunuk explained in a telephone interview from his home in
Igloolik, a community in Nunavut, the huge Inuit region created out of
Canada's Northwest Territories seven years ago.
The film, which Mr. Cohn describes as an "unguided tour," looks
at the transition largely through the experiences of an emotionally
turbulent shaman, Avva, played by Pakak Innukshuk, and his daughter,
Apak, played by Leah Angutimarik, and it does not get hung up on
conventional logic along the way.
For instance, in a recurring scene, filmed in splintered close-ups of
Apak's nude body and cut to the erotic beat of throat singing by
Tanya Taqaq (who has collaborated with Bjork), Apak makes love to the
spirit of her murdered husband. Typically, the movie does not spell out
whether she is remembering, dreaming, hallucinating or making actual
contact.
The Inuit "lived in a world where the natural and supernatural were
interchangeable," Mr. Cohn said. "They completely believed in
both."
Elizabeth Weatherford, head of the National Museum of the American
Indian
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nat\
ional_museum_of_the_american_indian/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 's
Film and Video Center, which is organizing the festival, said that quest
for spiritual authenticity helped to qualify the movie as "one of
the most outstanding achievements this past year in native film."
(The New York screening will be followed on Dec. 1 by a second
presentation by the museum, at the National Gallery of Art
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nat\
ional_gallery_of_art/index.html?inline=nyt-org> in Washington. The
film's New York commercial release is slated for March 16.)
"The Journals" is the second feature-film collaboration of Mr.
Cohn and Mr. Kunuk, who previously worked together on numerous
productions about Inuit life. Their debut feature, "The Fast
Runner"
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=246171&inline=nyt\
_ttl> ("Atanajurat"), won the 2001 Cannes Film Festival's
Cam�ra d'Or, among other awards, and A. O. Scott of The New York
Times placed it second on his list of the year's best films.
Directed by Mr. Kunuk and produced and shot by Mr. Cohn, that film was a
three-hour retelling of an ancient Inuit legend. It was billed as the
first Inuktitut-language feature.
"Atanajurat," which climaxed with the spectacle of a naked man
running for his life across melting Arctic ice, played like an adventure
film, while "The Journals" dwells far more on the inner life and
spiritual turmoil of its characters. In an added twist Mr. Innukshuk
plays his own ancestor in the new film, delivering an uncanny
stream-of-consciousness monologue taken from the real Knud
Rasmussen's transcription of the historical Avva's words.
"The whole purpose of the film is to give this guy a voice that he
himself tried to send into the future," said Mr. Cohn, who
eventually found his way to the Arctic after opting out of Columbia
University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/col\
umbia_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 's graduate playwriting
program in the 1960s and becoming a respected video artist.
He began collaborating with Mr. Kunuk in the 1980s, though he now spends
less time in the North, even as his co-director, a soapstone sculptor
who became a documentarian and video maker, chooses to live there,
living a traditional Inuit life (including whale hunting) even as he
deploys state-of-the-art filmmaking technology. Now often separated by
vast space, the two remain committed to an open-ended approach that is
everywhere apparent in "The Journals."
"Our films don't provide answers," Mr. Cohn explained.
"They visualize questions."
By MAURIE ALIOFF
Published: November 19, 2006
www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/movies/19alio.html?ex=1164517200&en=82\
965b595b7d1afa&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS
<http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/19/movies/19alio.html?ex=1164517200&en=8\
2965b595b7d1afa&ei=5099&partner=TOPIXNEWS>
WHEN "The Journals of Knud Rasmussen"
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=353038&inline=nyt\
_ttl> screens at the Native American Film and Video Festival in New
York on Nov. 30, it will narrow the time and space gap between
contemporary Manhattan and the Canadian Arctic of the 1920s. But viewers
will need to accept the challenge of crossing the spiritual gulf
separating them from this drama's Inuit subjects.
Enlarge This Image
[http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2006/11/19/arts/19alio.190.jpg]
Reuters
Zacharias Kunuk, co-director of "The Journals of Knud
Rasmussen."
"You have to fall forward into our world," suggested Norman
Cohn, the New York-born filmmaker who wrote and directed the movie with
Zacharias Kunuk, a native of the Arctic. "You're not going to be
made to look stupid. Nothing bad is going to happen to you. Why not jump
in?"
In creating this unconventional film, Mr. Cohn and Mr. Kunuk were driven
by one purpose: getting the complexities of the native experience right.
Drawn from the observations of Knud Rasmussen, a Danish
adventurer-anthropologist who was part Inuit, "The Journals"
portrays a 1922 contact between Rasmussen, played by the Danish actor
Jens Jorn Spottag, and a people whose shamanism was then being undercut
by Christian missionaries. As their cheerful worldview crumbled, the
Inuit, as portrayed by the filmmakers, were drawn into an unaccustomed
darkness of the soul.
"When Christianity came, all the spirits that we believed in became
evil," Mr. Kunuk explained in a telephone interview from his home in
Igloolik, a community in Nunavut, the huge Inuit region created out of
Canada's Northwest Territories seven years ago.
The film, which Mr. Cohn describes as an "unguided tour," looks
at the transition largely through the experiences of an emotionally
turbulent shaman, Avva, played by Pakak Innukshuk, and his daughter,
Apak, played by Leah Angutimarik, and it does not get hung up on
conventional logic along the way.
For instance, in a recurring scene, filmed in splintered close-ups of
Apak's nude body and cut to the erotic beat of throat singing by
Tanya Taqaq (who has collaborated with Bjork), Apak makes love to the
spirit of her murdered husband. Typically, the movie does not spell out
whether she is remembering, dreaming, hallucinating or making actual
contact.
The Inuit "lived in a world where the natural and supernatural were
interchangeable," Mr. Cohn said. "They completely believed in
both."
Elizabeth Weatherford, head of the National Museum of the American
Indian
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nat\
ional_museum_of_the_american_indian/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 's
Film and Video Center, which is organizing the festival, said that quest
for spiritual authenticity helped to qualify the movie as "one of
the most outstanding achievements this past year in native film."
(The New York screening will be followed on Dec. 1 by a second
presentation by the museum, at the National Gallery of Art
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/nat\
ional_gallery_of_art/index.html?inline=nyt-org> in Washington. The
film's New York commercial release is slated for March 16.)
"The Journals" is the second feature-film collaboration of Mr.
Cohn and Mr. Kunuk, who previously worked together on numerous
productions about Inuit life. Their debut feature, "The Fast
Runner"
<http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=246171&inline=nyt\
_ttl> ("Atanajurat"), won the 2001 Cannes Film Festival's
Cam�ra d'Or, among other awards, and A. O. Scott of The New York
Times placed it second on his list of the year's best films.
Directed by Mr. Kunuk and produced and shot by Mr. Cohn, that film was a
three-hour retelling of an ancient Inuit legend. It was billed as the
first Inuktitut-language feature.
"Atanajurat," which climaxed with the spectacle of a naked man
running for his life across melting Arctic ice, played like an adventure
film, while "The Journals" dwells far more on the inner life and
spiritual turmoil of its characters. In an added twist Mr. Innukshuk
plays his own ancestor in the new film, delivering an uncanny
stream-of-consciousness monologue taken from the real Knud
Rasmussen's transcription of the historical Avva's words.
"The whole purpose of the film is to give this guy a voice that he
himself tried to send into the future," said Mr. Cohn, who
eventually found his way to the Arctic after opting out of Columbia
University
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/col\
umbia_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org> 's graduate playwriting
program in the 1960s and becoming a respected video artist.
He began collaborating with Mr. Kunuk in the 1980s, though he now spends
less time in the North, even as his co-director, a soapstone sculptor
who became a documentarian and video maker, chooses to live there,
living a traditional Inuit life (including whale hunting) even as he
deploys state-of-the-art filmmaking technology. Now often separated by
vast space, the two remain committed to an open-ended approach that is
everywhere apparent in "The Journals."
"Our films don't provide answers," Mr. Cohn explained.
"They visualize questions."