Zacharias Kunuk

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Zacharias Kunuk (* 1957 in Camp Kapuivik near Iglulik , Nunavut ) is a Canadian film producer , film director and screenwriter . He belongs to the Inuit ethnic group .

life and work

Zacharias ("Zach") Kunuk was born in 1957 in a Qarmaq in Camp Kapuivik, where his nomadic parents spent the winters. He has ten siblings. Up to the age of nine, Zacharias lived with his parents Inuki and Vivi Kunuk and was brought up by them in the traditional way. Here he acquired skills such as hunting with dog sleds. In order to comply with the compulsory schooling introduced in the north of Canada in the 1950s, he and one of his brothers had to move to the Inuit settlement Iglulik in 1966; the rest of the family followed two years later.

Zacharias Kunuk initially earned money carving serpentine sculptures , which enabled him to purchase his first video camera on a trip to Montreal in 1981 . Between 1982 and 1991 he worked at the Iglulik branch of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) as a cameraman, producer and branch manager. In 1990 he founded the first Inuit-owned film production company, Igloolik Isuma Productions , with the non-Inuk Norman Cohn , an excellent cameraman, and the Inuit Paul Apak Angilirq and Pauloosie Qulitalik, who also work as producers at IBC . His film debut Atanarjuat - The legend of the fast runner (2001), the film adaptation of an Inuit legend, has received numerous awards. It is the first Canadian feature film to be written, produced, directed and acted by Inuit.

This film earned Zacharias Kunuk around 15 prestigious awards; for example, he was the 2001 Toronto International Film Festival Award for best Canadian feature film, 2001 he was awarded at the International Film Festival of Cannes , the Golden Camera , and in 2002 he won four Genie Awards , namely the Claude Jutra Award for best director, the best editing and the best film.

Kunuk produces films, directs, writes scripts and also works as a production designer and film editor .

In 2017 he was accepted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), which awards the Oscars every year.

Isuma TV

During the February 2009 Transmediale , Zacharais Kunuk and his colleagues presented Isuma TV , the first web portal for indigenous filmmakers.

For the makers of Isuma TV, it's a project for more self-determination , against the feeling of losing one's own culture. The new media have a special meaning for Eskimos: surfing the Internet caught on more quickly than in Central Europe . The original oral tradition is still part of the Eskimos' culture: For 4,000 years they lived as nomads from hunting, stories and their own stories they passed on orally - until the arrival of Catholic missionaries around 1930. In the tradition of storytelling Isuma TV ties in with its own center: Don't let people tell you about yourself, but “speak for yourself”, in your own language , that is Isuma TV's motto .

Filmography (selection)

producer

Director

  • 1999: Nunavut: Our Land (TV series)
  • 2001: Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner ( Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner )
  • 2006: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

Screenwriter

Production designer

  • 2006: The Journals of Knud Rasmussen

Film editor

literature

  • Atanarjuat - The Fast Runner . Coach House Books & Isuma Publishing, Toronto 2002. ISBN 1-55245-113-5

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "Class of 2017". Accessed June 30, 2017. http://www.app.oscars.org/class2017/ .
personal data
SURNAME Kunuk, Zacharias
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Canadian film producer, film director and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH 1957
PLACE OF BIRTH Camp Kapuivik near Iglulik , Nunavut , Canada