If you want your children to know where they come from, you have to show them where they come from—with all the tools possible.

The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation had its limitations, so the need to find a way to explore political ideas pushed Zacharias Kunuk, Paul Apak Angilirq, Pauloosie Qulitalik and Norman Cohn—who had collaborated on film projects since 1985—to create Igloolik Isuma Productions Inc. in 1990, now often referred to simply as Isuma. Their major contribution is a bountiful catalogue of film and video work spanning more than 30 years. Their output is just a glimpse of the wonderful ways the Isuma team has tended their little corner of the world: the way they have empowered and fought to work in a paradigm that matches the values of the collective—community, voice and accessibility are some of the integral values that guide their work; the way those values are present, both in the films onscreen and in the many ways of working and living off-screen; and the way they maintain the social support structures that have kept Inuit strong over thousands of years living out on the Nuna. Isuma has created a network of capable people who communicate and listen to each other through various working tasks that change constantly. All are honed into a shared set of values that guide the work to be done. Working with others is a pleasure when you’ve taken the time to arrive on the same page.

Isuma’s methods are, like many artists, also guided by technological advancements, which can bring with them a change in the abilities of creators, and often a change in aesthetics too. When sound was brought to screen and the talkie emerged, storytelling in motion pictures changed drastically. French New Wave blossomed in the 1960s with the availability of the Eclair Caméflex. The lightweight camera changed the possibilities of filming and there could be a bit more playfulness in the way scenes were captured, which produced a noticeable shift in the aesthetics of film at the time. When the hand-held camera was invented, it made filmmaking more accessible to creators who couldn’t get behind the camera before. The hand-held camera changed the way directors like Agnes Varda worked, with the intimate The Gleaners and I (2000) as an example. The HD camera and improved digital storage made the single-shot feature Russian Ark (2002) possible. Although it is possible to film in the cold of the Arctic winter, as the skilled Inuit film technicians who worked off-camera on Nanook of the North proved, it’s definitely not preferable. When it comes to Isuma, these smaller, more agile cameras are the key to unlocking a universe. The hand-held video camera can really be thanked for the great service of bringing Inuit cinema to us—I mean, think about the freedom needed to film a man running naked across the sea ice!