Silent film on climate change

Check out this amazing silent film called "Speaking out on climate change". In the tradition of Buster Keaton-style black and white slapstick comedy, this piece by Pangnirtung's Julie Alivaktuk brilliantly pokes fun at the very serious issue of climate change and how it affects Arctic ecosystems and Inuit people.

This film was developed with Julie over a ten-day period while Qajaaq Ellsworth, Stacey Aglok MacDonald and myself were in Pangnirtung to carryout youth-focused climate change video work. Through their Inuusivut project (www.inuusivut.com), which promotes video production as a technique for suicide prevention and community building, Qajaaq and Stacey had trained and helped Julie to make other films. When we arrived in town this time, Julie was very focused and knew exactly how she wanted to approach a climate change film, and this is the end product.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, I think that the approach of making a silent film called "Speaking out on climate change" is a savy political commentary about the reality that indigenous people - particularly indigenous youth - have a muted voice in the cacaphony of business, government and environmental perspectives loudly heard in the news. Hopefully Julie's film sheds some - black and white - light on the need to hear young Inuit perspectives on climate change.

Filmmaker: Julie Alivaktuk

Filmmaker Contact:

j-alivaktuk-16 [at] live [dot] ca

Producer's Name: Igloolik Isuma Productions and Innusivut

Year of Production: 2009

Country: Canada

Region: Baffin Island