One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk

Catch ‘One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk’ al Padiglione Canada durante il Festival del Cinema di Venezia.

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Catch 'One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk' at the Canada Pavilion during the Venice International Film Festival

76th Venice International Film Festival
August 28 – September 7, 2019

Canada Pavilion, Giardini
One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk
A film by Isuma
Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada

During the 76th Venice Film Festival, Isuma's lastest feature-length film, One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, will be on view at the Canada Pavilion as part of the exhibition presented at Biennale Arte 2019.

Commissioned by the National Gallery of Canada, the exhibition by artist collective Isuma at the Biennale Arte is the first presentation of art by Inuit in the Canada Pavilion and the first exhibition since the building underwent a $3-million CAD restoration in 2017–2018. Isuma’s exhibition in Venice coincides with the United Nations’ International Year of Indigenous Languages, offering an unprecedented opportunity to share Inuit-language creative production on a global stage.

In 2001, Isuma’s first feature-length drama, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner, won the Camera d’or at the Cannes Film Festival; in 2002, both Atanarjuat and Nunavut (Our Land), were shown at Documenta 11 in Kassel, Germany. Isuma’s second feature, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, opened the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival, and its third feature, Before Tomorrow, written and directed by Igloolik’s Arnait Video Productions women’s collective, was screened in World Cinema Competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival.
"Heading home" from One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, 2019. Courtesy of Isuma Distribution International.

Isuma, the artist collective led by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, presents a three-part project consisting of: One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk, a video installation of Isuma’s latest dramatic film; Isuma Online, a collection of Inuit and other Indigenous-language films available on iTunes and IsumaTV with an online exhibition catalogue at isuma.tv; and Silakut Live from the Floe Edge, a series of live webcasts from the land around Baffin Island.

In a joint statement, the curators said:

“Working against persistent historic trauma, Isuma's practice recovers and sustains stories, language and traditions. Isuma creates contemporary forms of gathering places, through television broadcast, the internet, documentaries and fiction films. Our work as a curatorial team is guided by the collective’s values. We are inspired by the ways in which Isuma’s media activism forges networks among Indigenous peoples and beyond, thoughtfully mobilizing new communities of resistance. The artists’ presentation in Venice offers models of radical inclusivity and digital democracy. We feel that these media works link the social, cultural and political effects of dislocation and are particularly resonant in our present moment—a time that affords great mobility to a privileged few and forced dislocation for many.”
Isuma, 2019. Installation view at the Canada Pavilion for the 58th International Art Exhibition – la Biennale di Venezia, May 2019. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada and Isuma Distribution International. Photo: Francesco Barasciutti.

One Day in the Life of Noah Piugattuk | 4K digital video installation, 112 minutes, Inuktitut-English 2019

In April 1961, John Kennedy is America’s new President, the Cold War heats up in Berlin and nuclear bombers are deployed from bases in arctic Canada. In Kapuivik, north Baffin Island, Noah Piugattuk’s nomadic Inuit band live and hunt by dog team as his ancestors did when he was born in 1900. When the white man known as Boss arrives at Piugattuk’s hunting camp, what appears as a chance meeting soon opens up the prospect of momentous change. Boss is an agent of the government, assigned to get Piugattuk to move his band to settlement housing and send his children to school so they can get jobs and make money. But Kapuivik is Piugattuk’s homeland. He takes no part in the Canadian experience; and cannot imagine what his children would do with money.

Isuma Online | isuma.tv
Isuma’s exhibition in cyberspace presents a collection of Isuma and other Indigenous-language films on iTunes in 30 countries with subtitles in English, Italian, French, Spanish and German. Isuma Online features Silakut Live from the Floe Edge webcasts, the complete archive of Igloolik’s Inuktitut video production since 1985, and more than 7,000 international Indigenous films and videos in 75 languages. lsumaTV’s network of local servers in remote Inuit communities makes the exhibition available in regions where high-cost and low-bandwidth prevent fair access to internet media. Isuma Online also offers a free exhibition catalogue with critical essays, scripts, background information, behind-the- scenes photographs and links to all films.

Silakut Live from the Floe Edge
Fifty-eight years after Boss ordered Piugattuk off his homeland into a government settlement, a mining company proposes building a railroad across Baffin Island to ship 30 million tons of iron ore annually by supertanker through walrus breeding grounds within view of Piugattuk’s former home site at Kapuivik. Isuma webcasted Silakut Live from the Floe Edge from May 8–11, 2019, consulting Igloolik hunting families on the impact and benefits of the iron mine’s proposed expansion. From September 16–21, Isuma will webcast Silakut Live from Pond Inlet, where public hearings will review the mining company’s Environmental Impact Statement. Silakut Live brings global media transparency to the consequences of forced relocation to viewers in Nunavut, Venice, Canada and worldwide. A schedule of Silakut Live webcasts online and transmitted to select theatres in Venice, Canada and other participating locations can be found at isuma.tv/live.