Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman's Apprentice | |
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Directed by | Zacharias Kunuk |
Written by | Zacharias Kunuk Jonathan Frantz |
Produced by | Neil Christopher Jonathan Frantz Zacharias Kunuk Nadia Mike |
Starring | Madeline Ivalu Jacky Qrunnut Lucy Tulugarjuk |
Cinematography | Evan Derushie |
Edited by | Evan Derushie Daniel Dietzel Maia Iotzova |
Music by | Beatrice Deer Sylvia Ipirautaq Cloutier |
Production companies | Kingulliit Productions Taqqut Productions |
Distributed by | Isuma |
Release date |
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Running time | 20 minutes |
Country | Canada |
Languages | English Inuktitut |
Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman's Apprentice is a Canadian animated short film, directed by Zacharias Kunuk and released in 2021. [1]
A story about the traditional Inuit role of the shaman, the film centres on a grandmother (Madeline Ivalu) and granddaughter (Lucy Tulugarjuk) who travel to the underworld in an effort to heal an ill young hunter (Jacky Qrunnut). [2]
The film was released alongside a children's picture book of the story, written by Kunuk and illustrated by Megan Kyak-Monteith. [3] The book was published in both English and Inuktitut; the latter edition won the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for work published in an indigenous language. [4]
The film premiered at the 2021 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it won the FIPRESCI Award. [2] It had its Canadian premiere at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the award for Best Canadian Short Film. [5]
The film was named to TIFF's annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list for 2021. [6] It was subsequently named to the initial shortlist for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for the 94th Academy Awards, [7] and won the Canadian Screen Award for Best Animated Short at the 10th Canadian Screen Awards in 2022. [8]
It also won Best Independent Short Film at the Festival Stop Montreal. [9]
Tanya Tagaq, also credited as Tagaq, is a Canadian Inuk throat singer, songwriter, novelist, actor, and visual artist from Cambridge Bay (Iqaluktuuttiaq), Nunavut, Canada, on the south coast of Victoria Island.
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is a 2001 Canadian epic film directed by Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk and produced by his company Isuma Igloolik Productions. It was the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language.
Zacharias Kunuk is a Canadian Inuk producer and director most notable for his film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the first Canadian dramatic feature film produced entirely in Inuktitut. He is the president and co-founder with Paul Qulitalik, Paul Apak Angilirq, and Norman Cohn, of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada's first independent Inuit production company. Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001), the first feature film that was entirely in Inuktitut was named as the greatest Canadian film of all time by the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival poll.
The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is a 2006 Canadian-Danish film directed by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn. The film is about the pressures on traditional Inuit shamanistic beliefs as documented by Knud Rasmussen during his travels across the Canadian Arctic in the 1920s.
The 31st Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 7 to September 16, 2006. Opening the festival was Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn's The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, a film that "explores the history of the Inuit people [sic] through the eyes of a father and daughter."
Isuma is an artist collective and Canada's first Inuit-owned (75%) production company, co-founded by Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq and Norman Cohn in Igloolik, Nunavut in 1990. Known internationally for its award-winning film, Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner, the first feature film ever to be written, directed and acted entirely in the Inuktitut language, Isuma was selected to represent Canada at the 2019 Venice Biennale where they screened the film One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, the first presentation of art by Inuit in the Canada Pavilion.
Norman Cohn is a U.S.-born Canadian film director, producer, cinematographer and editor best known for his work on films Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen.
Natar Ungalaaq is a Canadian Inuk actor, filmmaker and sculptor whose work is in many major collections of Inuit art. Before playing the lead roles in Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001) and The Necessities of Life (2008), Ungalaaq played major roles in other Canadian and American films, including Kabloonak (1995), Glory & Honor (1998) and Frostfire (1994). He is also a producer and director of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation.
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Arnait Video Productions is a women's filmmaking collective that aims to value the voices of Inuit women in debates of interest to all Canadians. Arnait is related to Isuma Productions.
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Searchers is a 2016 Inuktitut-language Canadian drama film directed by Zacharias Kunuk and Natar Ungalaaq, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. Based in part on the 1956 John Ford film The Searchers, the film is set in Northern Canada in 1913. It centres on Kuanana, a man who returns from hunting to discover that much of his family has been killed and his wife and daughter have been kidnapped.
Darlene Naponse is an Anishinaabe filmmaker, writer, director, and community activist from Canada. She is most noted for her 2018 film Falls Around Her, which premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival in September 2018 and subsequently won the Air Canada Audience Choice Award at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in October.
Biidaaban (The Dawn Comes) is a Canadian animated short film, directed by Amanda Strong and released in 2018. Based on the writings of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, the film centres on Biidaaban, a young shapeshifter on a secret mission to revive the traditional First Nations ritual of harvesting sap from maple trees to make maple sugar, despite living in a contemporary urban area.
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk is a Canadian drama film, directed by Zacharias Kunuk and released in 2019. The film dramatizes the true story of Noah Piugattuk, an Inuk hunter, over the day in 1961 when he was fatefully approached by a Canadian government agent who encouraged him to give up the traditional Inuit lifestyle and assimilate into a conventionally modern settlement.
Hot Flash is a Canadian animated short film, directed by Thea Hollatz and released in 2019. The film centres on a woman working as a television newscaster, who experiences a menopause-related hot flash just as she is about to go on air to report on a snowstorm.
The 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, the 46th event in the Toronto International Film Festival series, was held from September 9 to 18, 2021. Due to the continued COVID-19 pandemic in Toronto, the festival was staged as a "hybrid" of in-person and digital screenings. Most films were screened both in-person and on the digital platform, although a few titles were withheld by their distributors from the digital platform and instead were screened exclusively in-person.
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