September 7, 2001

Houston debuts Nuliajuk

Precious film, video and audio records will reside in Nova Scotia

ALISON BLACKDUCK
Nunatsiaq News

IQALUIT — Saint Mary's University is archiving the "exquisite agony" of filmmaker John Houston.

"We're a repository for the Nuliajuk tapes," says Harold McGee, an anthropology professor at Saint Mary's in Halifax.

Nuliajuk: Mother of the Sea Beasts is a new documentary film by Houston, the son of legendary Inuit-art promoter and filmmaker James Houston.

Nuliajuk, also known as Sedna, is a central figure in Inuit spirituality and mythology. She is the source of all life, and is both benevolent and cruel. Nuliajuk takes just as freely as she gives.

"When I was editing the film… we had such riches to work from that it was just exquisite agony," Houston said in a telephone interview from his Halifax home. "For every 27 feet of film, I've got to leave 26 behind."

Last autumn, Houston and members of his production team interviewed 32 Inuit for the film. The result was 27 hours of Super 16 millimetre film, 30 hours of digital videotape and 10 hours of digital audio recordings.

Now, all that documentation will be housed and studied by students and researchers at Saint Mary's. The project is funded by a $75,000 grant from the Richard Ivey Foundation, and a $10,000 grant from the Salamander Foundation.

"We have signed with them a five-year partnership in which they will support all the stuff we're doing and even help train some of these people like David Poisey," Houston says, "He ended up doing a four-month contract as an archivist, archiving the material that he had filmed and also the material we'd filmed in Super 16, and part of his training was from the anthropological department of St. Mary's."

Nuliajuk premiered at the Museum of Civilization in Hull, Que. two weeks ago.

"It was premiered there… (but) it's not really a theatrical release, it was created for television as a one-hour television program, so it's wonderful to premiere it at that type of venue and then the next thing is there'll be festivals and so-forth," Houston says. "There will soon be dates chosen by Vision TV, and after that APTN will have a broadcast date."

The film's premiere, attended by more than 500 people, was successful, according to Nunavut Commissioner Peter Irniq.

Houston invited Irniq to perform at the event.

Irniq said performing at the premiere was especially meaningful to him because Houston dedicated Nuliajuk to Irniq's former brother-in-law, Victor Tungilik.
Tungilik was a shaman from the Kivalliq.

"When Peter Irniq phoned me in the editing room and said, 'I'm very sorry to tell you my brother-in-law Victor has just passed away,' I went, 'Aha! That's what I've been saying; there's no time to sit and wait, we've got to talk to people now,'" Houston recalls.

"It felt to me while I was editing that I'd been given a tremendous responsibility. The last thing you want to do when people come out and say some of these things is go and even inadvertently bungle it up, so they end sounding… disappointed or ashamed that they spoke up," he says.

"We've had people feeling ashamed to speak in the aboriginal world the last century or two — that's been kind of a pattern, " he says. "What I strongly hope is that as part of the new millennium it will be possible to present a situation where… aboriginal people… will feel empowered and encouraged to speak with the knowledge that their words aren't going to be used against them."

Nuliajuk is the second part of Houston's trilogy about Inuit. The first part was Songs in Stone and the last part will be Diet of Souls.

Peter d'Entremont is producing the trilogy for Triad Film Productions Inc., a Halifax-based company.