Profile | Norman Cohn

Norman Cohn (b. 1946, New York) is currently co-Project Leader with Zacharias Kunuk on Digital Indigenous Democracy, the 2012-13 initiative by Isuma TV and other partners to inform and consult Inuit using new media to improve democratic participation in the Baffinland Iron Mine environmental review. Cohn also is Kingulliit Productions co-founder and president of Isuma Distribution International and IsumaTV; of Kunuk Cohn Productions Inc.; and was one of the four founding partners of Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc. in 1990. Living from 1985-2005 in Igloolik and Montreal, Cohn developed with Kunuk, elder Pauloosie Qulitalik and the late Paul Apak, Isuma’s signature style of ‘re-lived' cultural drama, combining the authenticity of modern video with the ancient art of Inuit storytelling.

Cohn is producer and director of photography for Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, Nunavut (Our Land) and the rest of Isuma’s collective videography; and co-director and co-writer with Kunuk on The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Before coming to Igloolik Cohn’s solo video exhibition, Norman Cohn: Portraits, opened in 1983 at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Vancouver Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, and other Canadian museums, and his experimental non-fiction feature, Quartet for Deafblind (1987), was selected for Dokumenta 7. Winner of a 1990 Guggenheim Fellowship, Cohn was co-winner with Kunuk of the 1994 Bell Canada Award for Outstanding Achievement in Video Art.