Isuma Online: Igloolik Venice 1985–2019

In 2019 Baffinland Iron Mine’s expansion proposes a railroad across Baffin Island to ship 30 million tons of iron ore annually by supertanker through walrus breeding grounds within view of Piugattuk’s former home site at Kapuivik. Isuma webcasts Silakut Live from the Floe Edge May 8–11, 2019 to inform and consult Inuit families on the impacts and benefits of the mine’s proposal. Other webcasts through the summer lead to Silakut Live from Pond Inlet September 16–21, webcasting live NIRB Final Public Hearings to review Baffinland’s Environmental Impact Statement. Silakut Live brings global media transparency to the consequences of forced relocation to viewers in Nunavut, Venice, Canada and worldwide.

Isuma’s exhibition in cyberspace presents a collection of Isuma and other indigenous-language films on iTunes in 30 countries with subtitles in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German, including Atanarjuat The Fast Runner (Cannes Camera d’or 2001); The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (opening film at 2006 Toronto International Film Festival); Before Tomorrow (by Igloolik’s Arnait women’s collective); Edge of the Knife, the world’s first feature film in the Haida language; and One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk. Isuma Distribution presents The Year of Indigenous Languages in Film, a festival of international indigenous-language features on iTunes, IsumaTV and in museums and cinemas globally.

In the spirit of media democracy, Isuma's exhibition at the 58th Biennale di Venezia has a parallel exhibition accessible to anyone with an Internet connection through www.isuma.tv and The Isuma Book. In the spirit of working together for a common purpose, The Isuma Book includes multiple voices, media and topics: the art work Isuma is presenting at the 58th Biennale di Venezia, commissioned essays and republished texts cover subjects such as the origins of Isuma Productions and Isuma TV; the media environment in Nunavut in the 1990s and 2000s; and, the impact of forced relocation of Inuit and its intersection with the Cold War. The Isuma Book is the most comprehensive book on Isuma to date, spanning more than three decades of practice. It is also an iterative online publication. New content is released each month from May to November during the period of the 58th Biennale di Venezia.

In 1985 Zacharias Kunuk, Norman Cohn, Paul Apak and elder Pauloosie Qulitalik formed Igloolik Isuma Productions, incorporated in 1990 to produce independent media art from an Inuit point of view. In 2001 Isuma’s first feature, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, won the Caméra d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. In 2006 The Journals of Knud Rasmussen opened the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2008 Isuma launched IsumaTV, the world’s first website for international Indigenous media art. In 2018 Isuma helped produce the first Haida-language feature film, Edge of the Knife. Isuma’s latest feature One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk represents Canada at the Biennale Arte 2019.

An experimental internet network created in 2012 to inform and consult Inuit in low-bandwidth communities facing development from the Baffinland Iron Mine and other resource projects, to help define standards of ‘inform and consult’ now required by Canadian and international law. In 2014, Isuma produced a non-fiction feature, My Father’s Land, about what took place during the Baffinland intervention. Audio and video interactive new media allow oral spoken Inuktitut to be the main language used to inform and consult Inuit and bring global transparency to the regulatory process.
 

Isuma Online features the complete archive of Igloolik’s Inuktitut video production since 1985 with more than 7000 international Indigenous films and videos in over 70 languages. IsumaTV’s network of local servers in remote Inuit communities makes IsumaTV available in regions where high-cost and low-bandwidth prevent fair access to internet media. Isuma Online also offers a free exhibition catalogue with critical essays, scripts, background information, behind-the-scenes photographs and links to all films.