A short film from Secondary students at Jaanimmarik School in Kuujjuaq
From the 8th to the 15th of November, 2024, we, Secondary 5 students from the Jaanimmarik School in Kuujjuaq, got the opportunity as a team of 21 students to create a short film, with the Nuna Research Program. In just a few days we put all our ideas together to create a beautiful film about “nuna.” We decided to take a bit of everyone’s ideas and created a video about what our land means to us. We shared our experiences on the land, and our relationships with it.
Our movie starts with the meaning of our town’s name, Kuujjuaq. Because we are far from the sea we have to go far to harvest. In other communities the caribou access is easier, but as we are on the tree line and the tundra is pretty far, it is hard to access the caribou by snowmobile or by boat. The river’s current is very strong regardless of whether the tide is high or low.
We took videos and pictures of the town and landscapes outside of town, and also added a bunch of hunting and berry picking photos we already had. We filmed ptarmigan, beluga, caribou, and geese hunting. We also showed some wheelies having fun with snowmobile. We recorded the ice, snow, and wind in the trees and water. We also got permission to use the beluga sounds from the Anguvigaq team and local artist Etua Snowball allowed us to use his song Piqatiga in our film. We interviewed an elder and the Secondary Inuktitut teacher. We questioned the elder about her memories of the land, including her time berry picking. The movie also includes the recipe for suvalik.
Everyone participated and had their own role in this film. Some of us filmed, some of us recorded the music and ambient sounds, and some of us helped edit and translate the interviews. In addition, we created a short video, “Behind the scenes,” about the making of this short film. What we wanted to show in our film is that the land is beautiful, hunting is beautiful. We also wanted to share where we go hunting and why the land is very important to us. We don’t kill animals for fun.
To conclude, this workshop was a lot of work but also lots of fun.
The Nuna research program (F. Joliet, L. Chanteloup, Th. Herrmann) is part of the OHMi Nunavik initiative, aimed at supporting the visual and narrative sovereignty of young Nunavimmiut. The program has organized several video workshops in various schools across Nunavik, allowing young people to share their visions and aspirations for their territory. All films produced during these workshops are returned to the schools and given to each young participant, enabling them to be exchanged and creating a portrait of contemporary Nunavik. This year, the research team (F. Joliet, L. Chanteloup, V. Antomarchi, K. Henchoz-Manita) was in Kuujjuaq and received strong support from Jaanimmarik school in executing this project (J. Blais, D. Rooney, G. Koiter).
