What Belongs to Inuit

The Hunters

April 1977 •English

This film joins a hunting-party of inhabitants of the Frobisher Bay Correctional Centre. The stalking, killing and skinning of seal and caribou are featured prominently, with explanations as to the importance of these animals to the Inuit way of life.

How to Build an Igloo

January 1949 •English

This classic short film shows how to make an igloo using only snow and a knife. Two Inuit men in Canada’s Far North choose the site, cut and place snow blocks and create an entrance--a shelter completed in one-and-a-half hours. The commentary explains that the interior warmth and the wind outside cement the snow blocks firmly together. As the short winter day darkens, the two builders move their caribou sleeping robes and extra skins indoors, confident of spending a snug night in the midst of the Arctic cold!

Qipisa

February 2017 •Inuktitut

The director goes back to her roots in Pangnirtung, amongst her family and community. It leads her to another journey: to Qipisa, the outpost camp from where they were uprooted.

Eskimos und die Zivilisation

January 1989 •German

Short film about inuits

Nanook Revisited

June 1988 •French

Filmmakers revisit Inukjuak, the Inuit village where Robert J. Flaherty filmed Nanook of the North in the early twentieth century, and examine the realities behind the ground-breaking documentary.

Kaali Goes for Seal Hunting

January 1985 •English

One day in the lives of an average Greenlandic family, which happens to be of great importance for 8-year old Kali - he's about to catch his first prey with the harpoon. The whole family is looking forward for the huge step in boy's maturation.

Urban Inuk

January 2005 •English

Qallunajatut (Urban Inuk) follows the lives of three Inuit in Montreal over the course of one hot and humid summer.Only two generations ago Inuit lived in small, nomadic hunting camps scattered across the vast Arctic landscape. Since the 1950s, this traditional lifestyle has undergone an astonishing transition from Stone Age to Information Age, as Inuit first relocated (often by force) to government-run settlements, and, more recently, beyond the settlement into southern cities.

Greenland

December 2024 •English

Highway to the Arctic

February 2017 •German

Every winter for decades, the Northwest Territories, in the Canadian Far North, changes its face. While the landscape is covered with snow and lakes of a thick layer of ice, blocking land transport, ice roads are converted to frozen expanses as far as the eye can see.

Natsik Hunting

January 1975 •English

Mosha Michael made an assured directorial debut with this seven-minute short, a relaxed, narration-free depiction of an Inuk seal hunt. Having participated in a 1974 Super 8 workshop in Frobisher Bay, Michael shot and edited the film himself. His voice can be heard on the appealing guitar-based soundtrack…. Natsik Hunting is believed to be Canada’s first Inuk-directed film. – NFB

Labrador North

January 1973 •English

This short documentary looks at the government relocation of the Labrador Inuit and the effects on their culture and social structures.

Pictures Out Of My Life

January 1973 •English

The drawings and recollections of Inuit artist Pitseolak, from the book of the same title written by Dorothy Eber. Now in her seventies, Pitseolak is one of the most famous of the graphic artists of the Cape Dorset (Baffin Island) artists' colony and co-operative. Her coloured pencil and felt-pen drawings vividly illustrate her memories of past life in the Arctic, and of the birds, animals and spirits that figured so large in the daily life of the Inuit.

Between Two Worlds

January 1990 •English

This feature film is a documentary portrait of Joseph Idlout, a man who was once the world's most famous Inuit. Unknown to most Canadians today, Idlout was the subject of many films and books, and one of the Inuit hunters pictured for many years on the back of Canada's $2 bill. In this film Idlout's son, Peter Paniloo, takes us on a journey through his father's life - that of a man caught "between two worlds."

The Annanacks

January 1964 •English

This short documentary depicts the formation in 1959 of the first successful co-operative in an Inuit community in Northern Québec. The film describes how, with other Inuit of the George River community, the Annanacks formed a joint venture that included a sawmill, a fish-freezing plant and a small boat-building industry.

If the Weather Permits

June 2003 •Inuktitut

Director Elisapie Issac's documentary is a sort-of letter to her deceased grandfather addressing the question of Inuit culture in the modern world.

Martha of the North

January 2009 •English

In the mid-1950s, lured by false promises of a better life, Inuit families were displaced by the Canadian government and left to their own devices in the Far North. In this icy desert realm, Martha Flaherty and her family lived through one of Canadian history’s most sombre and little-known episodes.

Inuk Woman City Blues

Invalid date •Kalaallisut

Follows homeless, addicted and alienated Greenlandic women in Copenhagen, Denmark; includes fragments of Greenlandic culture.

Nanook of the North

June 1922 •English

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Miss Campbell: Inuk Teacher

October 2023 •English

Part oral history and part visual poem, Miss Campbell: Inuk Teacher is the story of Evelyn Campbell, a trailblazer for an Inuit-led educational system in the small community of Rigolet, Labrador.

Timuti

January 2012 •Inuktitut

In Inukjuak, an Inuit community in the Eastern Arctic, a baby boy has come into the world and they call him Timuti, a name that recurs across generations of his people, evoking other Timutis, alive and dead, who will nourish his spirit and shape his destiny.