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No funding, no film tour, Isuma says

“The situation in the film industry in Nunavut is really, really disgraceful”

SARA MINOGUE

Igloolik Isuma Productions shut down the tour of its latest film last week, after it became clear that they would not get any help from the Government of Nunavut to complete it.

Norman Cohn, co-director of the The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, said Isuma could continue showing its latest film in communities on its own, but that would be “an embarrassment to everybody.”

“The idea that we tour with no support from anybody at the Government of Nunavut… is ridiculous,” Cohn said.

Isuma had already done 16 visits out of a 56-community tour of Nunavut, Nunavik and Greenland. They asked for, and hoped to receive, some funding from Nunavut Film, the GN’s arms-length film support agency, before March 31, the end of the GN’s fiscal year.

By April 2, it was clear to them that this wouldn’t happen.

Igloolik Isuma plans to resume the tour after the film debuts at the Toronto International Film Festival this fall.

This summer Isuma will begin shooting Before Tomorrow in northern Quebec.

That film could have easily been shot in Nunavut, Cohn said, but Nunavut Film offered no grants or subsidies beyond a labour subsidy, which is capped at $235,000. Isuma received that money in the last week of March.

The lack of support for the tour was the final straw for Cohn.

“The truth is that the situation in the film industry in Nunavut is really, really disgraceful,” Cohn said.

Nunavut Film is an agency that was destined to fail, Cohn said, expressing sympathy for the organization’s recently fired director, Sheila Pokiak.

No one, Cohn said, would have an easy time answering to a three-person board that is answerable to a management committee that is answerable to the assistant deputy minister of economic development and transportation — none of whom have experience in the film industry.

The worst symptom of the flawed system, Cohn said, is that Nunavummiut will now enjoy only half a million dollars worth of jobs during the next film’s production this summer, instead of $1.5 million worth of jobs.

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