Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

About

Un Certain Regard - Official Selection - Cannes 2001
Winner Camera d'or for Best First Feature Film
Canada's Official Selection - Foreign Language Oscar® !
Winner of 6 Genie Awards!
Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Editing, Claude Jutra

Best Canadian Feature Film (2001 Toronto International Film Festival)
Co-Winner, Guardian Award for Best New Director (2001 Edinburgh International Film Festival)
Grand Prix of the Flemish Community for Best Film (2001 Flanders International Film Festival - Ghent)
Special Jury Prize and the Prix du Public (Festival International du nouveau Cinema et des nouveaux Medias de Montreal 2001)
CTV Best of Fest Award (Next Fest 2001 - Digital Motion Picture Festival)
Best Film (ImagineNATIVE Media Arts Festival)
Best Feature Film (2001 Sante Fe International Festival)
Best Feature Film (2002 San Diego International Film Festival)
Audience Award (2002 Newport International Film Festival)
Audience Award (2002 Lake Placid Film Forum)
Best Film, Best Actor, Best Actress (2002 American Indian Film Festival)
Best Feature-Length Mountain Fiction Film (2002 Banff Mountain Film Festival)

Igloolik is a community of 1200 people located on a small island in the north Baffin region of the Canadian Arctic with archeological evidence of 4000 years of continuous habitation. Throughout these millennia, with no written language, untold numbers of nomadic Inuit renewed their culture and traditional knowledge for every generation entirely through storytelling.

Our film Atanarjuat is part of this continuous stream of oral history carried forward into the new millennium through a marriage of Inuit storytelling skills and new technology.

Atanarjuat is Canada's first feature-length fiction film written, produced, directed, and acted by Inuit. An exciting action thriller set in ancient Igloolik, the film unfolds as a life-threatening struggle between powerful natural and supernatural characters.

Atanarjuat gives international audiences a more authentic view of Inuit culture and oral tradition than ever before, from the inside and through Inuit eyes.

For countless generations, Igloolik elders have kept the legend of Atanarjuat alive to teach young Inuit the danger of setting personal desire above the needs of the group.

The tale of making the film is itself made up of many stories...


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Tagged:

Atanarjuat, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, The Fast Runner, working channel

Media on this Channel

  • Cast and Characters

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    Atanarjuat was cast entirely with Inuit actors from Igloolik.

    The cast were a mix of experienced and newly-initiated actors. Natar Ungalaaq as Atanarjuat, and Paul and Mary Qulitalik as Qulitaliq and Nuriuniq, for example, have previous credits in Claude Masson's Kabloonak, CBC's Trial at Fortitude Bay and Turner Broadcasting's Glory and Honor.

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Sets

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    The sets for Atanarjuat were all authentic Inuit dwellings, made from traditional natural materials such as ice blocks, animal skins, rocks, sod, and snow. Igloos, for instance, were crafted from real snow blocks - not styrofoam as in some Southern productions about life in the Arctic!

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Qamutik

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    In the film, this qamutik (sled) belongs to Atanarjuat. It is made of caribou antlers and bone carefully laced together with sinew cord. Water is drizzled on the runners until it freezes, then made slick with a scrap of fur so that travel over the ice and tundra is swift and smooth.

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Qajaq

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    In the film, Atanarjuat paddles to shore in this qajaq (one-man canoe), toward his summer camp and his wife Atuat, who is now expecting their son.

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Hunting Tools

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    In the film, this set of hunting tools is made of intricately laced bone and sinew.

    The forked kakivak (fish spear) requires impeccable hand-eye coordination and timing.

    The unaaq (spear) can be used hunt a variety of animals, such as polar bear, seal, walrus, beluga, and narwhal.

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Caribou Goggles

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    Iggak (caribou goggles) are carved from the antlers of the animal. They were worn to protect the eyes from the harsh glare of sunlight reflected on the ice and snow in the Arctic.

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Props

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    The filmmakers assembled a group of talented local artisans to re-create the props used in Atanarjuat.

    They were led by head prop-maker and artistic director James Ungalaaq, an internationally renowned Inuit sculptor from Igloolik whose work is in numerous museum collections of Inuit art worldwide

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Raven Parka

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    This parka is worn by the original camp leader and shaman Kumaglak. His murder in the presence of the Evil Shaman, Tungajuaq, sparks the bloody feud between Atanarjuat and Oki's families. The raven feathers sewn on the skin of the parka indicate that the man wearing it is a shaman.

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009

  • Oki's Hood

    uploaded by: IsumaTV

    channel: Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner)

    This winter nasaq (hood) was worn by Oki in the film. Made of wolf fur, the hood has long tentacle-like strips encircling the neck, the effect of which is to make Oki look fiercer and meaner.

    … Read more

    uploaded date: 15-10-2009