ICC Nuuk, Greenland, part 2: Launch of the Inuit Film Festival

To my great frustration, there is an Inuit Film Festival taking place in conjunction with the General Assembly of the Inuit Circumpolar Council here in Nuuk, Greenland. It's frustrating, because there are many film being shown throughout the week and I want to see them all, but there are too many conflicts time wise and I won't be able to. I did get to attend the opener, which also happened to be the world premier of the feature film, Inuk.

The festival is taking place not in a threatre but in a community center with a screen hung on the wall, to create the flavor of days gone by when movies were a fairly rare thing here. They were shown in community halls, and would draw pretty much everyone in the community. They would come for the fun, and to get a peek at the world outside of the Arctic, a world which few had seen.

Over time, movies became more commonplace, television came, along with videos. Stories from the outside world became more common, but what was not seen so much of was Inuit stories of the Inuit world.

Now, many Inuit actors and filmmakers are working to change that, often in collaboration with non-Inuit filmmakers.

Inuk is one example.

And on opening night, the community center was filled to capacity. People even stood outside the doors, peeking in to get a glimpse.

Sitting in the front row is Pipaluk Kreutzmann Joergensen, a TV producer of program for young people called Oqarit (Say It). Next to her is the program's onscreen host, Mudi Kramer Berthelsen, Aqqaluk Lynge, President of ICC Greenland, Dr. Karla Jessen Williamson, board member of the University of Greenland.

The film focuses primarily upon the stories of two individuals. Inuk, played by Gaaba Petersen, is a sixteen year old boy who began life as the son of a successful hunter in Northern Greenland, but after a tragic turn wound up living in Nuuk with his mother. He then grew up in the midst of alcohol abuse, often without enough food to eat.

Finally, after he was found sleeping in a frozen vehicle, he was taken from his mother and placed in a children's home in the north Greenland community of Umanak. Living in that community is Ikuma, a skilled but troubled hunter on a bad run of unsuccessful hunts. He does not want to "babysit" any of the children from the home, but, seeing his recent bad luck, the director bribes him and his regular hunting partners to take Inuk and other youth from the home out hunting in a caravan of dog sleds.

The drama unfolds as Inuk and Ikuma reluctantly work their way into each other's hearts as they head out on a long dogsled hunting trip that takes a tragic turn, forcing them to deal with the personal and cultural loses they have experienced in life.

As they do, they face not only the hardships brought to them by cultural change, but also the challenges and dangers that a warming climate is bringing to a place where the people rely upon ice that is becoming less stable than it once was.

Petersen was unable to attend the premier in Nuuk, but Ole Jorgen Hammeken, left, who plays Ikuma, did. Just before the film started, he appeared with script writer, Jean Michel Huctin, to speak briefly to the audience.

Hammeken actually lives in Umanak. In the movie, Ikuma is a very skilled dog musher and so, as I watched Hammeken play his role and skillfully drive his dogs over the ice, I thought he must have been a dog musher all of his life.

When I talked to him afterward, I was surprised to learn that he had actually grown up in Nuuk. When he first moved to Umanak, where he now works with his wife in the actual children's home depicted in the film, he did not know how to drive dogs.

He learned and just as Ikuma did in the film, Hammeken now takes youth from the home out dog mushing on the ice and teaches them to hunt. Just hunting helped the ficticious teen Inuk come to terms with the troubles life had brought to him, so, too, does it help the troubled youth who Hammeken works with in real life.

"What I want to communicate to the young is that we have this heritiage of the Eskimo, we have to use our heritage and be proud of that. Life has changed in this modern world, but our hertiage is still very important; we need to be proud of it." 

Hammeken as Ikuma, in a scene from Inuk.

While the film was shot in May and October of 2008, the making of it took most of the past decade. American director Mike Magidson and French script writer Hutchin had long been working with Hammeken and the people of Umanak on documentary films. 

"We heard so many stories," Hutchins recalls, including those upon which this film is based. They felt it could only be told in a dramatic film.

"It is an independent film" Hammeken notes. "By that I mean none of us have been paid."

"It is not a question of money, it is a question of dreams," Hutchin adds.

The project did attract the attention of Hollywood filmmakers who had the potential to help fully fund the project. Some even came to Greenland, excited to help make such a film - but, Hammeken notes, they wanted to reshape into something more Hollywood. They did not want to just tell the simple but powerful story of the Inuit hunter and the young boy coming together, but to work a white actor into a lead role. 

This had not happened in real, it was not part of the story, and they would not compromise. Fortunately, Prince Albert of Monaco did come through with the funding necessary for them to complete the film.

"Everything that you see in this film is true," Hutchin says. "It is not one story, it is many stories, brought together as one."

The Inuit actors and hunters were given free reign to improvise, to make their life as real as they knew it. In the movie, Inuk kills his first seal, an event that is followed by a happy and joyous celebration amongst the hunters and the other youth from the children's home.

That seal was not only Inuk's first, but also the first ever shot by Petersen, the actor who played him. Rather than trying to direct everyone and tell them what to do with the seal, the actors were turned loose to react, cook, eat and celebrate just as if no film was being made.

In another scene, a hurt and angry Inuk has stripped off his clothing in a suicide attempt. This was not written into the film, but happened after Petersen grew angry with the filmmakers and stripped off his clothing for real. They worked the scene into the film powerfully. "It turned out better than we could have imagined," Hutchin says. In Greenland, he notes, many suicide victims have been found frozen after they stripped off their clothing.

After the showing, many came to congratulate Hammeken, including Rachel Riley, middle, of Anaktuvuk Pass and Edith Nageak of Barrow, right.

In 2001, Hammeken and two others climbed into a sixteen foot motorboat in Greenland and journeyed all the way through the Inside Passage to Alaska. Kaktovik, Nageak's ancestral home, was the first village in Alaska that they reached. At first, the Iñupiat they mer there could not believe that they had come all the way from Greenland, traveling in the same manner that the village people use to go out hunting and fishing every summer.

Next, the adventurers reached the hotel in Deadhorse, in the midst of the Prudhoe Bay oil fields, just after a grizzly bear had gone inside and had left everyone all excited.

They stopped at Cross Island to hunt bowheads with the people of Nuiqsut, but no whale was landed while they were there.

They arrived in Barrow the day after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and found the atmosphere both somber and riled up.

They traveled on to Waiwright, Point Lay and Point Hope, and in subsequent summers continued on down the coast and across the Bering Straits into Russia.

It was a jouney that took Hammeken across the entire home of the people who make up the Inuit Circumpolar Council.

"Thank you for showing our life style, how we feel, to the world," Ann Marie Ottosen, left, of Nuuk said to Hutchin and Hammeken just before she and another presented them with flowers. "Thank you  to help us remember who we are."

Hutchin and Hammeken, with flowers.

Getting there - two flights from Copenhagen to Nuuk

After falling so far behind on sleep, I hung up my Skype call with Margie, and went to bed in my Copenhagen hotel at midnight, but I was so afraid that I might somehow oversleep that I hardly got a wink. I finally just gave up at 4:30 and got up.

Later, as I waited to board the first flight of the two that would take me to Nuuk, Greenland, I saw a man wearing a red cap with the word, "Russia," on it. This is he, Sasha Eynetegin Alexandar, standing with Tatyiana Achirigina. Sasha is an artist known for his walrus ivory carvings and he lives in Lavrentia, Chukotka.

Tatyiana is the Vice President of ICC Russia and the leader of this year's Russian delegation. She is a journalist from Providenyia, who I had met before when she had come to Barrow to observe a convention of the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission. She reminded me that I had taken some picture back then of her and the other Russians who had come and told me she wants them. So I have another task to perform sometime after I get home.

The first leg of our Air Greenland flight took us over Norway, enroute to Kangerlussuaq, one of only two civilian airports in Greenland with a runway long enough to accommodate large commercial air carriers.

As it was a four-and-a-half hour flight, I eventually had to undo my seat belt and head for the restroom. As I waited in line, a little girl fell off her chair, bumped her head and began to cry. Her father picked her up and comforted her. 

And then we were over Greenland, headed for Kangerlussuaq.

In September of 1996, I accompanied a delegation from the North Slope Borough that traveled to Chukotka, Russia, by helicopter. In the village of Lavrentia, I came upon a Russian photographer, Vasily Dobriev. Although we could not speak the same language, we communicated by taking each others pictures simultaneously, each of us using film single-lens reflect cameras.

At the airport in Kangerlussuaq, I happened upon the very same Vasily again. Again, there was a language barrier, but we communicated as we had before - this time, with small, digital, pocket cameras.

At Kangerlussuaq, we switched to smaller turbo-prop Dash 7. The stewardess gave us the safety briefing.

Then we were in the air, headed for Nuuk, one hour to south.

Although she looked like she could be Inuit, the lady next to me said she was from China, but we did not share a common language, so I learned no more about her or the purpose of her trip. She took pictures all the way. 

When we stepped into the Nuuk terminal, the group, Pamyua, of Anchorage sang a quick song of greeting. Pictured above is Ossie Kairaiuak, Karina Moeller (now of Anchorage but originally of Greenland) and Phillip Blanchett.

You will see more of Pamyua in here this week.

Following registration, there was an "ice breaker" at the convention center. Three Greenlandic choirs, including Aavat sang songs of greeting. At the same time, a display of Inuit art opened in the same building. During the course of the week, I will attempt to track down some of the artists.

An Inuit film festival was also about to begin.

Out on the streets of Nuuk, I saw some young people skating and riding skateboards.

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Two people met enroute - one likes to hunt, fish and install elevators...

This is Jeff, originally from North Dakota but now Anchorage, who works Otis Elevators. He flew the first leg of my trip to Greenland with me, from Anchorage to Minneapolis/St. Paul. A lady from Texas who thinks so highly of Sarah Palin that during her visit to Alaska she took a trip special to Wasilla so that she could photograph her house, asked him how long he had lived in Alaska. Sixteen years, he answered. “Do you like Alaska?” she asked. “Well, I’ve been here 16 years, so I guess I do.” He likes to get out in the country to hunt and fish, but (and I do not understand this at all) sometimes the mountains and the trees cause him to feel claustrophobic and he has to go back to North Dakota for a couple of weeks and soak up all that flat country. He works for Otis Elevators and hopes to soon go to Barrow to install the elevators in the new hospital being built there. He has never been to Barrow before, but is excited for the chance.

Update - August 26, 2010: I have received a comment from a grandmother that has convinced me that I must delete the second part of this post and all comments related to it. I am in a big gathering, doing this update with my thumbs on my iPhone. I will better explain later.

Update 2 - August 26, 2010:  To better explain, this post originally included images and stories of two people that I met enroute from Anchorage - Minneapolis - Amsterdam -Copenhagen, where I overnighted before continuing on to Nuuk, Greenland. That is something that I enjoy doing - getting images and little stories of people that I meet along the way as I travel here and there.

I have removed the second, which included two images and a story about the fellow that sat next to me between Minneapolis and Amsterdam. He was quiet for most of the trip, but in the final hour he told me a very compelling story that began in a torture horse operated by agents of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, then moved on to Minneapolis where he told me had fallen in love, married, that he and his wife had two children but that she had been killed in the infamous bridge collapse.

The story was so compelling that I asked if he would mind if I put it on my blog. He said that would be fine.

In retrospect, I should have got on Google to see what kind of news reports I might find regarding his story, but I reached Copenhagen in a state of extreme exhaustion - for I had been exhausted before I left Wasilla and had not got even one minutes sleep on a trip that took over 24 hours total. I put up a short post before I went to bed. After I got up the next morning, I wanted to get the story up before I moved on, so I took the man on the plane at his word and wrote it.

Later, a commenter who had seen the story in the news said that the man and his FORMER wife had been divorced at the time of her death. A couple of other questions and challenges to the facts as he had presented them to me and I had written were raised.

Then today, I received a comment from a woman who identified herself as the grandmother of the two boys. She stated that the boys were not the children of the man who had sat next to me on the flight and made some serious allegations as to how he had treated those boys during the very short time that he had been married to her mother.

Given those allegations, I decided it best that I just pull his story, pictures, and all comment related to it. To the grandmother and all those that the story may have brought pain to, I apologize.

Grandmother of the boys, may you and all who have been impacted by this terrible tragedy find peace.

Here I am in Copenhagen, in a stupor

I've got a few things and people met to blog about from the trip so far, but I simply can't do it. I'm in a stupor. Thursday night, or actually early Friday morning, I went to bed at 1:50 am and set the alarm for 4:50 - just in case the rare thing happened and I actually.

But it didn't. After hardly sleeping at all, I made certain to get up in time to turn the alarm off before it went off, then I took a shower, woke Margie up and drove to Anchorage and to the airport.

I had hoped to sleep between Anchorage and Minneapolis/St. Paul but I did not sleep one wink. I closed my eyes and tried pretty hard, but it just didn't work.

Same thing with Minneapolis/St. Paul to Amsterdam. For the first two hours, I forced myself to keep my eyes closed but still I could not fall asleep. Then I watched two movies and then spent the rest of the flight to Amsterday visiting the fellow next. I must put him in the blog, but I can't do it right now.

Nor could I sleep Amsterdam to Copenhagen.

Now I have been wandering downtown Copenhagen for the past six or seven hours, but I haven't enjoyed it as much as I would and in my stupor I kept doing stupid things, like step into a bike trail that I did not recognize as such where a guy plowed in my camera hand with his bike and sent my pocket camera flying and bouncing across the pavement.

It doesn't seem to have hurt it, though.

So I think I will go to bed early tonight, then get up early and catch my flight to Nuuk.

Speaking of Nuuk - there it is on this little map that I could pull up on the seat back in front of me when I was not watching movies. You can see where our plane was when I took the picture. See how close we were to Nuuk?

But we just went on, to Amsterdam, then to Copenhagen and tomorrow I must fly back to Nuuk.

So this is a lesson right here in the challenges that the people of the Iñuit Circumpolar Council have in getting together on any kind of regular basis.

Most of those coming down from Alaska are in Nuuk already and they came on a charter, but it was full so that is why I had to come this way. I didn't feel bad about it, though. I was excited to see Copenhagen.

And now I am too tired to enjoy Copenhagen.

I'm so tired, I can't write another w

Uiñiq finally published; missionaries walk dogs; grandsons come to visit me before I leave for Greenland, but now I am enroute

Finally, this Uiñiq is published! Oh, my goodness, has it been a long haul! I started working on it in the spring of 2008 in anticipation that I would have it done and out by the end of that year. But then, on June 12, 2008, I took my infamous fall, shattered my shoulder, got a $37,000-plus Lear Jet ambulance ride from Barrow to Providence Hospital in Anchorage, where, after two surgeries, the doctor took out my shattered humerus and gave me a titanium one - a wonder, yes, but no match for a real shoulder.

As so much of my work is physical, a year then passed before I was really able to get back to work on it in a serious way. Finally, I pretty much had it all together late last year, save for a bit of touchup. Then one thing after another just kept happening to delay it and during the delays I would make some changes and then it would be delayed again.

But now it is published and soon it will be distributed across the Arctic Slope.

And within a week of when I get back from Greenland, I will return to the Slope to start on the next one, which I hope to complete by the end of the year. I shouldn't say "start," because I actually have many photos and stories left over that I was not able to fit into this one, some of them more or less complete, some needing more work.

So I have already started.

Shortly after I drove away from Metro Cafe this afternoon (Carmen was not there, by the way) I saw these two Mormon missionaries walking these dogs alongside Spruce Avenue. Of course, I stopped to take their picture.

That's Elder Wade on the left and he is from Logan, Utah, a mountain town, and has been out for a year-and-half. That's Elder Stoker on the right, from St. George, Utah - a red-rock desert town and a place of searing heat this time of year.

They were walking the dogs for a church member and they asked me what Mormon ward I lived in, but I didn't know. For more than a quarter of a century, the only times that I have been inside the chapels of the church of my upbringing has been for the funerals of family members and friends.

They asked me, why? I just told them it was a long and complicated story, but not to worry, I have nothing but kind thoughts toward them because I have walked just as they walk, with dogs following, but never on leash, because these were reservation dogs and they came and went as they pleased. Those dogs just liked us, so they followed us.

So, however strange they may look to some and however far I wander from where they and I began, I continue to emphasize with these young men and to have a feeling for them.

The dogs got restless.

Someday, I will make a book of all these pictures of Mormon missionaries that I happen onto and I will tell missionary stories - not their stories, my stories.

God, it will be a powerful book!

And a heartbreaking one.

Mine was a mission of blood and tears.

The world never again looked the same to me.

I was unable to return to the place from whence I came.

Lavina brought Margie back, so that Margie could drive me to the airport to catch the plane that will begin my trip to Greenland. Jobe and Kalib came, too. Jobe is growing so fast!

He will probably be a giant when I return from Greenland, July 4.

Kalib wanted to hold Jobe.

And then they left.

And what I am doing, sitting here at 9:41 PM, Thursday night, working on this blog, when my flight leaves Anchorage at 7:45 AM Friday and I still have hours of tasks to complete before I go?

By the time this post appears, I will be on my way to Nuuk, Greenland.

To all my friends who are also going - see you there. I won't be on the charter with you. There was no room, so ICC Alaska booked me on a series of flights that will take me through Copenhagen. I will spend Saturday afternoon and night there.

I will post from Copenhagen.

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