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News
Back to News listing The Gazette, Sunday, February 11, 2001 Photography in the Arctic is an immensely difficult labour of love at the best of times, even more so if you are shooting with a cumbersome Imax camera and 5 tonnes of equipment. Which is why Montreal film-maker Martin Dignard's Great North, now showing at the Paramount, is such a stunning achievement. It's a visually breathtaking odyssey that captures the icy sweep and achingly beautiful vistas of the top of the world in a way that's never been seen before. Few nature films are as impressive. The movie pays homage to Robert Flaherty's 1922 classic Nanook of the North. By serendipity, the producers of Great North found Nanook's grandson, Adamie Inukpuck and, in an inspired bit of casting, put him in the film. The use of grainy black and white archival footage from Nanook permits viewers to see how conditions in the Arctic wilderness have changed and how much after 80 years they remain the same. The lessons of the past continue to be taught, and although the Inuit no longer live in igloos, the hunting traditions remain for the most part unaltered. So Inukpuck gathers mussels under 3 metres of ice as his grandfather did, and patiently stands for hours over a hole in the ice watching for a seal as his grandfather did. "Waiting," he says, "isn't a waste of time" when it means the difference between food and going hungry. The caribou are a cultural symbol of the Great North, and some of the most memorable moments in the film are aerial shots of huge, untamed herds moving like a tidal wave across the boreal terrain. There is also an astonishing scene that shows a caribou being born. Caribou are the link between Canada and Scandinavia, the catalyst in the film which also allows Dignard to explore the reindeer-herding traditions of the Saami people in northern Sweden. Great North shows how the Inuit share the land with the world's largest herd of migratory animals and how the Saami have almost domesticated the animals. Violaine Corradi's soundtrack is appropriately stark, dramatic and beautiful and matches the impressive images on the screen by photographers Dominique Gentil and David De Volpi. But it took more than a camera to make Great North. Dignard's love
of the land, his affection for the people and his respect for the
traditions of the Inuit and the Saami infuse every frame. Great
North is a great nature film of unparalleled beauty that admirably
conveys what Dignard calls "the power of all that space." Great North is playing at the Imax Theatre in the Paramount. |
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