Mush! To The Movies! Vol. V

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen (2006)

Saturday, July 18, 2015 - 7:30pm

The Journals of Knud Rasmussen
Canada, 2006, 112 min., digital projection
Written and directed by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn

The screening of this film has been sponsored by The Dawg Squad

The second film in the Fast Runner trilogy, from the same makers of Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner.  Unlike Atanarjuat, set in a mythic past, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen is set among Inuit in 1922-1923, as the shaman Avva and his children face the conversion of many Inuit from their home community to Christianity. We follow the Inuit view of the visitation by Danish explorer Knud Rasmussen, on his 5th Thule Expedition across the Canadian Arctic, accompanied by writer Peter Freuchen. With beauty and pacing to match Atanarjuat, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen allows us an alternate view of the encounters between Inuit and explorers from Europe.

****Los Angeles premiere !***

Preceded by:
In the Best of All Possible Worlds
USA & Norway, 2011, 6 min, digital projection

By Steve Rowell

The screening of this film has been sponsored by Sunset Beer Company

A short video from a larger research project "The Cold Coast Archive", in collaboration with artists Signe Lidén and Annesofie Norn. Both this video and the collaborative project use the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (SGSV) as a starting point for investigations into and extrapolations from the broader meaning of a remote landscape of contingency and preparedness. Built to withstand catastrophe, the SGSV is the most robust food-crop seed vault on Earth, buried in a frozen mountainside, on the arctic island of Spitsbergen, one of the most remote and pristine places on Earth. The Seed Vault was opened in 2008 and is currently hosting seeds from nearly every nation on Earth. For more information visit: www.coldcoastarchive.org

****Filmmaker Steve Rowell in attendance!*****

Also Screening:
Break
by Kate Lain
2015; 2:15 loop, Paper, ink, gelatin, to digital;

"Homemade gelatin is a fragile material, and I had recently begun using it in my printmaking. I was fascinated by the ways the gelatin block was impacted by the making of each print and suspected that if I made enough successive prints, I would be left with some sort of beautiful record of something completely falling apart. I ended up making 136 prints from a single block. I scanned the set of prints, each a unique record of a particular moment in the process of disintegration. The scans are what you see here. The scans have come alive, the prints sit quietly in a box, the gelatin is gone. The sounds are recordings of ice breaking apart. I made this in a broader context of global warming, melting of the polar ice caps, great personal unrest and change, and the deterioration of the health of a few people close to me." - Kate Lain

 

****Filmmaker Kate Lain in attendance!*****

 

Images from the event!