Language is life.Half-informal documentary and half-art installation, I left it cycling through many thoughts about feelings expressed by the film. In particular, parents talking about their child getting to grow up in a family and community that embraces and is proud of their culture. That that child will never know shame of where they come from. Small moment in a loud and profound film that made a real impact on me. It's often hard to see progress and meaningful change at a societal scale because of how assimilated we are into wider currents, but that's such a beautiful and tangible thing.There was a great and sadly too short conversation with one of the artists featured on the soundtrack, Charlotte Qamaniq from Silla, about many of the themes covered. She brought up that Canada's Inuit regions are not featured in the film because borders and logistics make it infeasible and it was tough not to latch onto that, too. I think I'd go insane if I spent too much time mulling over how much culture we economically shut out that way.The film exists, though. It's beautiful, it's filled with many who feel a purpose in their heart and bones to carry their culture forward not just for their community but for the world to see and embrace. Charlotte talked at one point in the post-film convo about how inuktitut evolves so rapidly as a language and it got me thinking too about how quickly the spaces for this kind of media is growing. Every artist, album, film, installation, it's all a step forward and one inspires one which can inspire two. Would I have been able to see something like this 20 years ago; how much more will I be able to see 20 from now?Also, seeing this in a performance venue where Bicep's score got to be fucking BLASTED on booming speakers? Fuck, man. I've listened to the album for a year but truly I listened to it for the first time tonight. Masters.God, I love art so much. I love art from us pushed into the margins because what we retaliate with is so potent and vivid and inspiring.
What an overwhelming performance of landscape and music, a millennia-long history of tradition and people and place tied together as one. The landscapes are the song - and as it changes (increasingly dramatically) so too do the stories. The venue this played in at VIFF was more concert hall than film screen and it made for an intense audiovisual experience I won't soon forget.There is something so brutal about seeing Inuit Greenlanders and Samí in Norway brought together in shared culture and struggle, only to hear one of the film's performers explain that their own people in the Canadian North could not be a part of this project because of the borders we imposed on the land. That long-held connections with families have been lost because they live in a territory the world calls Russia. At the same time, though, there is a real strength in seeing the Nuuk family talk of how they'll be able to raise their child without the shame imposed on their parents and grandparents. To see that, in places, the work of undoing the damage of European colonialism is well underway.A real bummer that Tarrak couldn't be present for the live part of the performance due to the cruelty of those aforementioned borders. The scrambled together throat singing duo that performed instead was incredible, though, even as it highlighted how hard it often is to hear the music of this land in this land.
absolutely phenomenal collaboration between the filmmakers, arctic indigenous peoples, and musicians involved. as fourth generation sámi (and even that feels so distant as it was only spoken about and never fully lived) it really filled my heart to see so much of the ghost of that heritage showcased so beautifully. i loved seeing and hearing from all the greenlandic, inuit and others represented in the film. bicep's involvement in the musical collaboration makes each of the featured collaborators shine in their own ways, respecting that musical culture and letting them take the lead. there is so much spoken language and discussion of the role that preservation of that language takes in cultural joy and making sure the thread of those traditions isn't dropped and lost. i dont really know much else to say other than i'm going to be living in the images and sounds of takkuuk for a long time. please see this if given the chance. it's so important!! one thing that was a really interesting point brought up by the inuit throat singer who performed in the film & was present at the showing was that so much of the inuit landscape and peoples aren't present in the film due to budgetary constraints of the organization funding the film and being located in europe. i really hope that there is some sort of conceptual "part 2" that features even more heavily the peoples of the northern territories & other nations not able to be represented in this slice of a film.
