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Women’s collective screens film for home town crowd

“It was awesome. It made me laugh, cry at the same time.” Members of Igloolik's Arnait video collective - a branch of filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk's Igloolik Isuma family - could hardly contain themselves after they viewed the final cut of Before Tomorrow, their first feature film... read whole article

Sonia Gunderson, Nunatisiaq News

Artist Profiles and Success Stories - Arnait Video Productions: Inuit women tell their story

“…In the spring of 2007, Arnait Video productions, a women’s collective that has received support from Igloolik Isuma Produtions, will unveil its first feature film, Before Tomorrow. Like Atanarjuat, it is shot entirely in Inuktitut…”

Christopher Guly, Canada Council for the Arts

“Before Tomorrow” – Igloolik & Puvirnituq Women Cooperate On Feature Film

“…When Marie-Hélène Cousineau and her colleagues at Igloolik's women's film collective, Arnait Video Productions, arrived in Puvirnituq last year to begin work on their first full-length feature film, they weren't sure what to expect. After all, they didn't know each other very well and their dialects are obviously different…”

Jim Bell, Native Unity (January 28, 2007)

Marie-Hélène Cousineau Filmer l’intimité et l’immensité

« …Marie-Hélène Cousineau connaît bien les Inuits puisqu’elle fréquente le Nunavut depuis 1990. Après Unakuluk, cher petit (2005), un documentaire sur l’adoption chez les Inuits, elle coréalise avec Madeline Ivalu « Le jour avant le lendemain », son premier long métrage de fiction, tourné au Nunavik… »

Denis Lord, Elle Québec (January 2007)

Inuit survival drama first feature by women film makers

“…When Marie-Helene Cousineau went on public radio in Igloolik 15 years ago to invite women to learn about making movies, she never imagined that she and a small local group would be shooting a feature film with a $3.5 million budget…”

Jackie Wallace, Nunatsiaq News (July 21, 2006)

Isuma, Les images du Nord

« …C’est Arnait Video qui a produit le documentaire « Unakuluk, cher petit », qui a été projeté le 28 mai dernier à l’ONF. Ce film de 46 minutes porte un regard très personnel sur le phénomène de l’adoption, de tout temps fort répandu chez le Inuits… »

Denis Lord

À Vol d’oisseau

« …Depuis combien de siècles ne mesure-t-on pas la hauteur des pyramides pour établir le haut niveau de connaissances mathématiques des anciens Égyptiens? En retour, sur ce contient-ci, on ignore tout ou presque des premiers peuples et des différents cosmogonies qui ont établi leur lecture de l’univers… »

Le Devoir (June 3-4, 2006)

Awakening

“…This exhibition addresses the image in relation to be process of awakening, as a moment of apparition and unveiling. It is a unique moment in which dreams dissolve into reality and lucidity. Awakening is also an opening to memories and unconscious processes where images are encrusted, that at any moment, threaten to emerge and reappear. With Aqtuqsi (My Nightmare), Mary Kunuk presents a nightmare that terrified her in her sleep when she was eleven or twelve…”

Vox (May 2004)

Women preserve the native voice News and noteworthy events at the Calgary International Film Festival

“…These films are important not only because they tell Inuit women’s stories from their own perspectives, but also because they record for future generations a traditional way of life that is rapidly changing, both physically, spiritually and emotionally…”

Shelley Boettcher, Calgary Herald (September 29, 2003)

Arnait Inuit Women’s Video

“…The imagery is compelling while the pace is not of a traditional documentary style. Viewers can explore the innovations that have come from mixing traditional and contemporary life in a way that is immediate and gripping…”

Kirstin Evenden, Glenbow Museum (2003)

First we take Tasiujaq, then we take the world / Iglulingmiut Web cast from a Baffin outpost camp

“…Members of Igloolik’s Arnait Video Productions built the Web site as a continuation of Anaana, a yet-to-be released documentary about Igloolik’s Kunuk family. Beginning Aug. 15, the group of 20 people Web cast the “sights and sounds” of the Kunnuk family’s summer outpost…”

Alison Blackduck, Nunatsiaq News (August 31, 2001)

Chapter: Indigenous experimentalism / Northern Lights Victor Masayesva

“…Oral tradition wields a fabulous power of revelation. I consider here four tapes produced by Arnait Ikajurtigiit (The Women’s Video Workshop of Igloolik); they all rely on the voice to divulge, respectively, a traditional activity, a tragic story, a fantastic legend, and a personal account equally charged with mythology…”

Magnetic North (November 2000)

Chapter: Response by Wendy Clarke on Qulliq

“…Oral tradition wields a fabulous power of revelation. I consider here four tapes produced by Arnait Ikajurtigiit (The Women’s Video Workshop of Igloolik); they all rely on the voice to divulge, respectively, a traditional activity, a tragic story, a fantastic legend, and a personal account equally charged with mythology…”

Magnetic North (November 2000)

Chapter: Body, Voice, Narrative / Accompanying the Real

“…Oral tradition wields a fabulous power of revelation. I consider here four tapes produced by Arnait Ikajurtigiit (The Women’s Video Workshop of Igloolik); they all rely on the voice to divulge, respectively, a traditional activity, a tragic story, a fantastic legend, and a

Nicole Gingras, Magnetic North (November 2000)

Helping Igloolik Women make videos

“…Seven years ago, video-maker Marie-Hélène Cousineau, who teaches television production at Concordia, was invited to Igloolik to help start a non-profit video centre. The idea was to give Inuit women a chance to use video as a means of expressing their concerns…”

Eve Krakow, Concordia Thursday Report (February 19, 1998)

Women of the North tell their stories

“…Rose Ukumaluk is dressed in a dark blue dress clotted with a simple white pattern. Wheelchair-bound, skin shriveled with age, eyes rheumy and throat clogged with phlegm the 94-year-old’s memory remains sharp as a harpoon. She was a midwife and great hunter. And now she sits, remembering, for the camera…”

Kathryn Greenaway, The Gazette (October 29, 1997)

About Attagutaaluk Starvation

“…When I traveled to Pond Inlet with Madeline’s family, they searched for the exact location where the family starved to death. Madeline, with outstretched arms as if hugging thirteen Inuit, said to me, “We are all descendants of Attagutaaluk.” At that very moment, two years after the completion of her video, I came to understand the significance not only of this history, but of what video production meant for Madeline…”

Marie-Hélène Cousineau

Attagutaaluk Starvation Taruagsuk Women’s Collective

“…Around the beginning of Natiyak, Inuktitut for May. All food, or whatever could be eaten was gone. Attagutaaluk, Etukusuk and her husband were the only survivors. All the rest had starved to death. Etukusuk’s husband then died from sickness and starvation. But before he died, he told the two women to use him and eat him after he died, so they could survive…”

Interview with Rose Ukumaluk, By the Skin of their Tongues (1997)

Marie-Hélène Cousineau: Videomaker

“…Cousineau: Since Susan, Madeline and Matilda didn’t really speak or understand English, I had to figure out how to teach them [videomaking] without talking, by showing. Sometimes we had no translator, and we just learned by watching. It was important to me that the training come out of their activities. We would film whatever they wanted so they could relate to it…”

Interviewed by Kathleen Fleming in July 1995, Inuit Art Quarterly (Summer 1996)

Chapter: Inuit Women’s Video

“…At Present, participants use video to express their traditional identity in the community and their role as women. This does not mean that the use of technology maintains them in a powerless situation. On the contrary, women participating in video production reaffirm their values, knowledge and experience in ways which are empowering to them…”

Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Video Review (1996)

Inuit films still in infancy

“…It comes as a refreshing surprise, a real eye-opener, to discover a place where film is still in its infancy, where its uses are still being worked out. Such places are increasingly rare, the global village being how it is, but one of them is in the Igloolik N.W.T….”

Jay Stone, The Ottawa Citizen (June 27, 1995)

Inuit Women’s Video / Des femmes inuits vidéastes

“…At Present, participants use video to express their traditional identity in the community and their role as women. This does not mean that the use of technology maintains them in a powerless situation. On the contrary, women participating in video production reaffirm their values, knowledge and experience in ways which are empowering to them…”

« …A l’heure actuelle, les participantes utilisent la vidéo pour exprimer leur identité traditionnelle dans la collectivité et leur rôle de femmes. Cela ne signifie pas que le fait de recourir à la technologie les garde impuissantes. Au contraire. ces femmes affirment de nouveau leurs valeurs, leur savoir et leurs expériences par des moyens qui les habilitent pleinement…»

Marie-Hélène Cousineau, Parrallelogramme (Vol.19 No.4. 1994)