Please join us on Wednesday, August 18, 2010 for a screening of the film, Nanook of the North, a performance by Inuit Throat Singer Lois Suluk Locke and internationally renowned musician and composer Brent Michael Davids, with a panel discussion about the movie and the Inuit life it portrayed.

Nanook of the North, a 1922 silent documentary film by Robert J. Flaherty, captured the struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian arctic. As the first documentary of its scale, Nanook of the North was ground-breaking cinema. Flaherty shot the film near Inukjuak, on Hudson Bay in Arctic Quebec, Canada. Having worked as a prospector and explorer in Arctic Canada among the Inuit, Flaherty was familiar with his subjects and set out to document their lifestyle.
Beginning with map-making excursions with his father while he was still a child, Flaherty's relationship to the terrain was pre-defined by his own work as a cartographer and mineralogist. Flaherty used the movement of nature — a boat skimming the floe-filled waves of the summer waters, the feathery fingers of mist snaking over the winter ice — to introduce the seasons and to create a sense of pantheistic animation amid the desolate splendor.

But Flaherty's film is first and last a document of native people. The film captured an Indigenous culture in a remote location, rather than on a movie set using actors and props. Traditional Inuit methods of hunting, fishing, igloo-building, and other customs were shown with accuracy, and the compelling story of a man and his family struggling against nature met with great success in North America and abroad. By bracketing the entire film with intimate portraits of its title character, Flaherty makes Nanook of the North indelible human drama.

The film is not technically sophisticated; how could it be, with one camera, no lights, freezing cold, and everyone equally at the mercy of nature?…What shines through is the humanity and optimism of the Inuit…"Nanook" stands alone in its stark regard for the courage and ingenuity of its heroes. Nanook is one of the most vital and unforgettable human beings ever recorded on film. ~ Roger Ebert

In 1989, this film was one of the first to be selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Following the movie, there will be a panel discussion with questions and answers from the audience. Panelists will include Lois Suluk Locke, an accomplished Inuit throat singer and storyteller from Nunavut, Canada, and Brent Michael Davids, an internationally acclaimed Native American composer and musician, with moderator Jane Blume. Following the panel discussion will be a short musical performance by Lois and Brent. After the event, there will be a free reception at the New Mexico Holocaust and Intolerance Museum (located two buildings east of the Historic El Rey Theater).
 
Where: The Historic El Rey Theater
            622 Central Ave., S. W.
            Albuquerque, NM
            (Downtown 7th and Central)

When: Saturday August 18, 2010

Time: Doors 7:00pm

Price: $10 suggested donation

Age Restriction: All Ages