Geography class shows Inuit flm

The Inuktitut language film Before Tomorrow will be screened on April 8 at 7:00 pm in room 108 of Mt A.’s Dunn building. Released in 2008 and directed by Marie-Hélène Cousineau and Madeline Ivalu, the film is an adaptation of the novel For Morgendaggen by Danish writer Jørn Riel, and is the first feature film to be made by Arnait Video Productions, a women’s Inuit film collective. Set in a small Inuit community in the Nunavik region of Northern Quebec in the 1840s, an Inuk elder is isolated with her grandson after most of their community perishes from smallpox transmitted by strange traders. The film garnered numerous Genie Award nominations at the thirtieth Genie Awards, including Best Motion Picture, Best Actor (Paul Dylan Ivalu), Best Actress (Madeline Ivalu), Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. Cousineau is currently in the process of finishing a feature film which should be released during the summer.. Information for the film can be found at http://uvangamovie.com.   The film screening event has been organized to promote IsumaTV, a web video platform for indigenous filmmakers to be accessible in a contextualized space. Indigenous people are concerned increasingly with producing their own images; they are either working with accomplished filmmakers like Cousineau or entering film and video themselves, like producer/director Zacharias Kunuk. Kunuk created the innovative Isuma TV project, a broadcasting internet platform made in Nunavut. Isuma TV was launched in 2008 by Iglooik Isuma Productions, independent producers of The Fast Runner Trilogy of award-winning Inuit-language films. It is an independent interactive network of Indigenous multimedia and uses the power and immediacy of the Web as a new vehicle for internal and external communication. These tools enable Indigenous people to express their reality in their own voices, whether it be views of the past, anxieties about the present, and hopes for the future. The goal of the multimedia project is meant to use new networking technology to build a new era of communication and exchange among Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and communities around the globe. Following the example of Youtube or Dailymotion, Isuma TV hosts 4,435 videos, including all the Isuma award winning videos which are available in HD and caters to fifty-six different languages. Created in the beginning very modestly by and for Inuit people, it quickly opened to other indigenous people.  This event is being hosted by students in Dr. Ian Mauro’s Arctic Environment class, and is sponsored by Mount Allison’s Department of Geography and Environment and RCE (Regional Centre of Expertise) Tantramar. Cousineau will join the audience at the end of the screening via Skype to engage in a question and answer period.

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