Director's blog

13th April

Our plane lands on a runway 6 inches thick with ice. We have flown four hours due north from Ottawa. After 20 minutes I couldn’t see any more houses, just ice and snow. Empty land. My heart is beating so fast, I feel terrified and excited. Everything in the last months has led to coming here.

I step from the plane onto the ice, a blast of wind hits me and I nearly lose my footing. It is minus 30C. The cold and the wind take my breath away, but mostly its horror at what I have done by coming here. Most of our clothing and film equipment has gone missing and ends up in Resolute, the closest settlement to the North Pole. Tanya’s fantastic costume, the huge red dress made by Sam and Clara in London has also disappeared along with the 2 suitcases of specially biodegradable potato starch paper. Luckily we had taken our parkas and the camera as hand luggage. We set out to explore the town, walking is difficult, the snow is so deep on the ground and it is shockingly cold. Our boots are fantastic, but we need more headgear… next stop a visit to the Arctic Survival Store for rabbit skin hats.

14th April

It is minus 30C and I stand for the first time at the edge of the sea ice. It is so beautiful I could weep. The snow is twinkling around me like diamonds, the light burning into my eyes, the sky blue above, and silence, total silence.

We collect our jeep and I ask the guy for tips on how to drive on roads like these. He looks at me, thinks for a while and says ‘take it slowly’. The snow and ice are so thick, its impossible to even see where the road is. The driving is quickly delegated to Jerry who seems completely unfazed. Later, on a desolate road at the edge of town we are scouting locations and my balaclava slips. Within minutes I have stage one frostbite on my nose.

15th April

We planned to film the paper throwing scene today, but the wind dropped. We are set up out on the sea ice near Apex and the light is fantastic. Lynda is shooting some long drifting pans across the vast landscape. The sun is low in the sky. Its so quiet you can actually hear the snow falling. Jerry is trying to record it. I’m at Celina’s house trying to get her and Tanya ready to perform their throatsinging duet. Celina has made two beautiful amautis, they are the perfect colour for the film, echoing the colours of the Hereford Map. Later, on the sea ice, they put in some great throatsinging performances. We missed the light, but Lynda and Jerry got some good landscape shots while they were waiting.

Photo © Felipe Ugarte

16th April

We collect Tanya after breakfast and take her to the jetty where we film her taking an epic walk across the frozen sea in her red dress. The landscape here looks so lunar.

After lunch it’s the seal skinning competition – the first event of this year’s Toonik Tyme festival – we’ve scheduled our whole trip around this event, but still have no idea what to expect. One by one the hunters arrive with the seals tied to their kamatiks. It’s a bloody but festive event, a real buzz from the crowd. Everyone steps in to either eat some of the raw meat there on the frozen ground, or pack it up into bags to take home. This meat is so nutritious and an essential part of the diet for a people who can raise no livestock or grow no crops, it’s strange to think that its also contaminated with Methyl Mercury, PCBs and Dioxin.

Photo © Felipe Ugarte

17th April

Today’s the day of the Community Feast – the most important event in our schedule. Michael Qappik from the Hunters and Trappers Association is laying out raw seal and caribou meat on a plastic sheet on the floor in the parish hall. The hall fills up with an excited crowd hungrily inspecting the meat. They fall silent as the preacher gives thanks for the animals in a rambling speech, he’s talking in Inuktituk, but his final prayer is easily identifiable as the Lords prayer. This town has more than 5 churches of different Christian denominations, thanks to the intervention of missionaries for the south. Once he ends the blessing everyone rushes in to claim some of the meat. Not so many people get out hunting in this town, they are more likely to be working in a government office, so everyone is craving fresh meat.

It’s a spiritual day full of tradition, the Inuit ancestors are never far away for them. One woman tells me that her children refuse to eat traditional food or speak Inuktitut, preferring burgers and speaking English. When I ask her what will happen to them she says “they’ll be white”.

18th April

A perfect still day. Tanya stands on a hillock at the edge of the sea ice wearing her red dress and sings. It looks magnificent and just like my storyboard drawings from over a year ago. We even get to shoot some versions using the jib which I’m very pleased about.

Both photos © Felipe Ugarte

19th April

Another beautiful day, we film Tanya walking along a perfect white ridge. Felipe, Tanya’s partner takes Lynda way out onto the sea ice on his skidoo. They film Tanya twirling around like Mary Poppins. Later Felipe and Jerry enter the Outdoor Games at Toonik Tyme. Hmmm…crawling under a fishing net, sliding downhill on a tin tray and running a race around the school. Lynda and I opted out and went off to the beach to film boats and sofas mysteriously buried in snow.

20th April

A windy day at last.We drag all the gear out onto the sea ice and set up the jib. We’re finally going to shoot the paper throwing scene. Thousands of sheets of specially made potato starch paper are thrown into the air by Tanya and flutter off into the icy wilderness. Tanya and Celina are great, the paper flutters beautifully. Its so cold that the jib weights freeze together.

It’s a wrap for the staged scenes which is a great relief. Now we can concentrate on shooting the interviews, dinners and landscapes, oh not forgetting the Toonik Tyme events for Channel 4.

21st April

Shockingly cold and hard work today. We shoot 2 Toonik Tyme events for Channel 4. We start with over 4 hours of hanging about in the Nakasuk School parking lot filming the Ice Sculpture contest. They are carving huge blocks of frozen sea ice for a first prize of a return flight to Ottawa. Its freezing work, a real endurance test for Lynda and Jerry. After only an hour of recovery time we head up behind the hospital for the Uphill Climb, a mad 2 hours of death defying skidoo racing. It’s twilight and eventually gets so cold that we have to stop. While we’re packing up the gear, a tap on my shoulder, its Janet Brewster, she wants to speak to us on camera, but independently, not as a representative of the Health Department. Its great news, a breakthrough, and I have a feeling its going to be a great interview, but not now, we’re heading to the Frobisher for hot food and stiff drinks…its been so tough today I’m wondering if Lynda and Jerry will mutiny.

22nd April

An unbelievable day! Minus 20 and very blustery, we are on a hill near Apex filming 1000 local people streaming towards us across the sea ice. Over a year ago in London I optimistically drew a picture of this scene. Some things are so difficult here, yet others just fall into place. It’s an epic scene. I’m thrilled.

23rd April

The Toonik Tyme Igloo Building competition! Very cold, but a beautiful day with clear blue skies. 5 men build igloos up behind the construction site. We are running with the camera and boom between the igloos trying to work out who is going to win…its Simeoni. He builds a beautiful igloo and invites us in. Its warm and lit with a fabulous blue glow. He’s very pleased, tells us he was born in an igloo, then ducks outside for a cigarette. Another gem for Channel 4.

24th April

We head to Therese Ukaliannuk’s house where we’ve been invited to film her preparing and cooking a family meal. It’s seal delivered fresh from Igloolik. Therese lives in Whiterow Housing, one of the few social housing projects in the area. In this inhospitable place its hard to think about what it must be like not to have a warm place to live, but homelessness is a huge and rising problem here.
Neither Therese or the translator Jessica know anything about contaminants, or at least they don’t want to know. What’s the point when there’s nothing they can do about it.

25th April

Interview day.

We start with a long awaited interview with Sheila Watt-Cloutier the Chair of the ICC. And then hot foot it across town to meet Janet Brewster at the Fantasy Palace. After trying out different locations, we finally settle on Janet’s mum’s apartment, set up the kit and then she proceeds to give us an extraordinary, emotional and eloquent interview. It’s so late when we finish that we’ve missed any chance of dinner in this town, but we’re all smiling…Lynda says ‘there’s your film’.

26th April

The official Health Department interview. Amy Caughy is charming, but won’t discuss anything but the official line on contaminants “the benefits outweigh the risks”. Although its really interesting to speak with her about the health impacts of Inuit eating western food – the few shops here are filled with expensive processed and sugary food, there’s hardly any fresh food to be bought. For the first time ever, Inuit are suffering from malnutrition, diabetes and heart disease.
Later we are standing on the edge of town on the Road to Nowhere, its minus 20 and a blizzard is blowing up. This town has thousands of cars, but not a single road that leads anywhere. Its so isolated the only way in is by plane, boats during July and August. It takes 18 hours riding a skidoo to reach the next settlement.

27th April

Due to fly out to Qikiqtarjuaq this morning, but are turned back from the airport because of a storm. A real low point, its not like we’re traveling with just hand luggage, we’ve got 10 flight cases of equipment with us.

Take the opportunity to pack up the jib and freight it back to Ottawa. Find out that Qikiqtarjuaq is totally dry, so spend the evening trying to procure some black market liquor to take with us. Its so tough filming outside here that I don’t think we can get through it without a drink in the evening. A midnight rendezvous in the hotel lobby results in a litre and a half of Canadian Club. Good result.

28th April

We fly further north to the smallest settlement I could find. Searching for emptiness. For the ultimate landscape.

Levi meets us at the runway and takes us to our B&B. Our host and guide Leelee says “ahh, its not so much B&B, more, ‘you’re on your own’!”. Our home for the next few days is a tiny wooden house with a boarded up window and broken glass on the floor. At least its warm. As a consequence of yesterday’s storms, everywhere is covered in thick fresh snow, it looks stunningly clean, exactly what we need for the film. There are only 200 people living in this settlement, most are living a traditional hunting life.

29th April

Levi takes us out to the floe edge. We pack up the gear onto a wooden sledge and he pulls us behind his skidoo. Its fantastic, but after about an hour the weather starts to break. The wind has changed direction and the sea ice we are traveling on is in danger of breaking away. We have to turn around and head for home. The windchill on the way back is extreme. We are in the middle of a storm. Our hands and feet are so cold we’re in trouble. Back to the shack disappointed, but glad we’ve got the Canadian Club.

30th April

The day starts with a lone polar bear straying into town. Leelee takes Jerry to see it on the back of his skidoo, they go right up close, then come back for Lynda and me. I’m petrified, he’s huge. Leelee can’t understand why we don’t want to film it, most film crews who make it this far north only really want to film wildlife. It reminds me of something Sheila said – that the world is far more interested in the arctic wildlife than its people. She’s right.

A beautiful day at last. This could be our only chance to get the landscape shots we need. The plan for the day is to shoot as much as we can. And we do.
We travel out over the sea ice past a towering ice-locked iceberg, overwhelming in its size and blueness…4,000 years old, the purest water there is. Four miles from land we reach the pressure ridges, a towering jumble of ice, each chunk over 20 feet high.

Standing four miles out from Qikitarjuaq on the pressure ridges, looking back over the sea ice towards the land. The sky is blue, the sun is shining and the snow is as pure white as it could ever be. This is surely the most beautiful place on earth. I stand completely still, trying to cram this feeling into my mind….so that I never forget that I was here.

1st May

It’s Sunday. Most people are at church. Leelee has disappeared and when we find him, he’s reluctant to take us out. Jerry persuades him and we travel in the opposite direction, finally arriving at the floe edge. I notice that the sledge is suddenly running very smoothly, we stop and Leelee shows us how slushy the ice is. He cuts through it with his knife, its very thin. I can’t look, we are miles away from land. There’s a loud noise from around the bay, like gunpowder explosion. It’s a huge piece of sea ice breaking off and drifting out to sea. Time to head back. There is so much beauty here its easy to forget how dangerous it is.
The floe edge used to be about 25 miles away from the settlement, now it’s a couple of miles. A clear sign of a changing climate. If it continues like this it will be disastrous for the hunters, but at the moment it actually makes hunting easier to have the edge closer to home.

2nd May

We fly out of Qikiqtarjuaq, just in time, back at the shack the water tank is emptyand the septic tank is backing up.

Back in Iqaluit we’ve got masses scheduled for the last 2 days.
Today an interview with Susan Sang from the World Wildlife Fund who is in town for a conference about the Nunanvut Wildlife Health Project, a groundbreaking collaboration between WWF, Trent University and Inuit hunters. The hunters have been collecting biological samples from their harvests of beluga, polar bear, ringed seal, walrus, caribou and arctic char – the samples are analyzed for contaminants. Susan is very cautious about what she will say on camera. We try to get her to talk about how whales are cordoned off and classified as toxic dumps when they are washed up to shore, but she won’t do it while the tape is running. Its sobering to think that people are eating this toxic food.

In the evening we are invited to Lucy Qavavauq’s house. Lucy is an Inuit mother who is pregnant with her second child. They are having an extended family dinner of a frozen whole arctic char and seal stew. Its fabulous, kids everywhere and a really relaxed family meal. David’s cooking is delicious. After dinner Lucy, Carol and Jean talk to us about how they feel about passing on the contamination to their babies. It’s very emotional. Their relationship to their traditional food is so strong its distressing for them to consider giving it up.

3rd May

At the WWF conference, John Amagoalik, “The Father of Nunavut” gives an impassioned speech condemning the western philosophy of “looking after number one”. He pointedly looks around the room and asks if there are any Americans present before he starts.

We head back to Lucy’s that evening to film a one to one interview with her, she’s exhausted, talking about contaminants after dinner last night was really emotional for her. Vocalising her guilt at having potentially contaminated her child. A lovely gentle interview.

4th May

Our last day. An epic 4 hour interview with Eric Loring from the ITK and NCP. Eric has been traveling to Inuit communities, educating people about contaminants and encouraging them to continue breastfeeding. The long term effects of contaminants will remain an unknown for a couple of generations, so for now they continue to encourage people to eat country food and breastfeed. The benefits outweigh the risks…but for how long?

Back to Capital Suites to finally pack up the gear and take our evening flight to Ottawa.

5th May

We were on Baffin Island for 25 days without a single day off. Our schedule was pinned down with military precision and the working conditions were incredibly tough. Now in a plush hotel in central Ottawa, mooching around town like tourists waiting for our flight back to London.

10th May

London. All I can think of is getting back to Nunavut. The landscape has burned itself into me. My eyes cannot acclimatize to the light here. Was I there? A small patch of frostbite at the end of my nose reminds me that I was.

All photographs © Jeremy Williams unless otherwise labelled.