Monday, September 18, 2006

Historical End of an Era

by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen tells the story of an Inuit shaman and is drawn from the writings of a member of a Danish scientific team. While the source material is Danish, the film is told from the point of view of Avva, the shaman and his daughter Apak. Set in 1922, it shows the transition from shamanism to Christianity from a perspective that I’ve never seen before. Beautifully shot in HD with a documentary feeling, it’s a film with unfamiliar rhythms. After about 15 minutes it all started to click together and I was completely engrossed. It’s a great way to kick off a festival.

Monday, September 04, 2006

26th Atlantic Film Festival

The Atlantic Film Festival for 2006 kicks off in a couple of weeks and I’ve gone through the schedule to plan out the films that I’m going to see and that will be part of school for the Screen Arts learners. If I make it to everything I should be able to see a combination of at least 43 feature and short films during the week and a half of the festival. It’s going to be a lot of fun.