Amarok's Song - The Journey to Nunavut

Made in collaboration with the Inuit Tungavingat Nunamini, this film focuses on those dissident members of the Inuit community who rejected the agreement signed on November 11, l975, between the Northern Quebec Inuit Association, the Québec and federal governments, the James Bay Energy Corporation, the James Bay Development Corporation, Hydro-Québec and the Grand Council of the Crees, which took away Native rights to a territory of almost one million square kilometres. By their words and actions, the dissident Inuit of Povungnituk, Ivujivik and Sugluk express their strong desire to retain their land and their traditions. The filmmakers go into their homes, on the ice and the sea to record first-hand the lives of these northern people.

In this feature-length documentary, 8 Inuit teens with cameras offer a vibrant and contemporary view of life in Canada's North. They also use their newly acquired film skills to confront a broad range of issues, from the widening communication gap between youth and their elders to the loss of their peers to suicide. In Inuktitut with English subtitles.

An American elementary school program from the 1970s, Man: A Course of Study (MACOS), looked to the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic to help students see their own society in a new way. At its core was The Netsilik Film Series, an acclaimed benchmark of visual anthropology from the National Film Board that captured a year in the life of an Inuit family, reconstructing an ancient culture on the cusp of contact with the outside world. But the graphic images of the Netsilik people created a clash of values that tore rifts in communities across the U.S. and revealed a fragile relationship between politics and education. A fiery national debate ensued between academic and conservative forces.

Through These Eyes looks back at the high stakes of this controversial curriculum. Decades later, as American influence continues to affect cultures worldwide, the story of MACOS resonates strongly.

This short film from the Canada Vignettes series chronicles the history of Labrador's Inuit and the role of the Moravian missionaries.

Please note that this is an archival film that makes use of the word “Eskimo,” an outdated and offensive term. While the origin of the word is a matter of some contention, it is no longer used in Canada. The term was formally rejected by the Inuit Circumpolar Council in 1980 and has subsequently not been in use at the NFB for decades. This film is therefore a time-capsule of a bygone era, presented in its original version. The NFB apologizes for the offence caused.

Shot during 3 seasons, this documentary tenderly portrays village life in Puvirnituq, on the shores of Hudson Bay in northern Quebec, as well as the elements that forge the character of its people: their history, the great open spaces, and their unflagging humour.

This documentary pokes fun at the ways in which Inuit people have been treated as “exotic” documentary subjects by turning the lens onto the strange behaviours of Qallunaat (the Inuit word for white people). The term refers less to skin colour than to a certain state of mind: Qallunaat greet each other with inane salutations, repress natural bodily functions, complain about being cold, and want to dominate the world. Their odd dating habits, unsuccessful attempts at Arctic exploration, overbearing bureaucrats and police, and obsession with owning property are curious indeed.

A collaboration between filmmaker Mark Sandiford and Inuit writer and satirist Zebedee Nungak, Qallunaat! brings the documentary form to an unexpected place in which oppression, history, and comedy collide.

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

Please note that this is an archival film that makes use of the word “Eskimo,” an outdated and offensive term. While the origin of the word is a matter of some contention, it is no longer used in Canada. The term was formally rejected by the Inuit Circumpolar Council in 1980 and has subsequently not been in use at the NFB for decades. This film is therefore a time-capsule of a bygone era, presented in its original version. The NFB apologizes for the offence caused.

This short documentary studies life in the village of Kangirsujuaq, Nunavik. In this community on the edge of the Arctic Ocean, children’s laughter fills the streets while the old people ponder the passage of time. They are nomads of the wide-open spaces who are trying to get used to the strange feeling of staying put. While the teenagers lap up Southern culture and play golf on the tundra to kill time, the Elders are slowly dying, as their entire culture seems to fade away.

Elisapie Isaac, a filmmaker born in Nunavik, decides to return to her roots on this breathtaking land. To bridge the growing gap between the young and the old, she speaks to her grandfather, now deceased, and confides in him her hopes and fears. Grappling with isolation, family relationships, resource extraction, land-based knowledges, the influence of Southern culture and the ongoing impacts of colonialism on Inuit ways of life, Elisapie Isaac offers a nuanced portrait of the North.

This short documentary serves as a quiet elegy for a way of life, which exists now only in the memories of those who experienced it. Bonnie Ammaaq and her family remember it vividly. When Bonnie was a little girl, her parents packed up their essentials, bundled her and her younger brother onto a long, fur-lined sled and left the government-manufactured community of Igloolik to live off the land, as had generations of Inuit before them.

In the summer of 1953, the Canadian government relocated seven Inuit families from Northern Quebec to the High Arctic. They were promised an abundance of game and fish, with the assurance that if things didn't work out, they could return home after two years. Two years later, another 35 people joined them. There they suffered from hunger, extreme cold, sickness, alcoholism and poverty. It would be thirty years before any of them saw their ancestral lands again. Interviews with survivors are combined with archival footage and documents to tell the poignant story of a people whose lives were nearly destroyed by their own government's broken promises.

This short film tells the story of an Inuk entrepreneur operating a lonely airport vending machine in Canada's second most northerly community.