Zacharias Kunuk, OC (born 1957) is a Canadian Inuk producer and director most notable for his film Atanarjuat, the first Canadian dramatic feature film produced completely in Inuktitut. He is the co-founder, with Norman Cohn, and president of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first independent Inuit production company.
acharias Kununk was born in Kapuivik on Baffin Island in Canada. In 1966 he attended school in Igloolik. There he carved and sold soapstone sculptures to afford movie admissions. As his skill improved, he was able to buy cameras and photographed Inuit hunting scenes. When he heard about video cameras in 1981, he purchased a camera and the basic equipment to be able to teach himself how to create his own movies.
His second film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, is a co-production with Denmark in which he is a co-writer and co-director with Norman Cohn. It premiered on September 7, 2006, as the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival. read more
Zacharias Kunuk, OC (born 1957) is a Canadian Inuk producer and director most notable for his film Atanarjuat, the first Canadian dramatic feature film produced completely in Inuktitut. He is the co-founder, with Norman Cohn, and president of Igloolik Isuma Productions, Canada’s first independent Inuit production company.
acharias Kununk was born in Kapuivik on Baffin Island in Canada. In 1966 he attended school in Igloolik. There he carved and sold soapstone sculptures to afford movie admissions. As his skill improved, he was able to buy cameras and photographed Inuit hunting scenes. When he heard about video cameras in 1981, he purchased a camera and the basic equipment to be able to teach himself how to create his own movies.
His second film, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, is a co-production with Denmark in which he is a co-writer and co-director with Norman Cohn. It premiered on September 7, 2006, as the opening film at the Toronto International Film Festival.
In 2002, Kunuk was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.
He is the son of Enoki Kunuk, a hunter who was lost for 27 days during June 2007 in the Arctic tundra.
Kunuk is the co-founder of the Inuit Knowledge and Climate Change Project, along with Ian Mauro of the University of Victoria’s School of Environmental Studies. The goal of the project is to collect information from Inuit elders for a film about the Inuit perspective on the impact of climate change on Inuit culture and the environment. The Project submitted a video to the United Nations for the 2009 COP15 Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change which was presented at Denmark’s National Gallery.
As of April 2011, Kunuk is developing a project with Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond about the 18th conflict between Cree and Inuit, which lasted almost a century. —Wikipedia
