In celebration of Canada’s sesquicentennial anniversary, ByTowne Cinema has been screening movies for free every Sunday afternoon and Monday evening until June 26 to celebrate the country’s best film productions, dubbed “Cinema 150.”
Last week, the award-winning documentary, Angry Inuk, took the spotlight.
The documentary directed by Alethea Arnaquq-Baril, presents an Inuk perspective on the seal hunt, a traditional and sustainable practice many animal activists groups deem evil and inhumane.
The theatre was packed, hosting one of the largest audiences the Cinema 150 has seen this year, with many attendees sporting their sealskin clothing.
Arnaquq-Baril, an Inuk woman and seal-hunting advocate herself, takes the audience to her hometown of Kimmirut, Nunavut, to explore the seal hunt that is essential to the community’s survival. She documents the growing movement of Inuit efforts to fight European government officials’ legislative bans on the seal hunt.
The European Union and animal-activist groups Greenpeace and the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) were successful in a ban on commercial seal hunting in May of 2009, a ban that left a significant burden on Inuit life.
The documentary is both a shocking expose and a personal reflection on the filmmaker’s own culture.
It details the issues within anti-seal activism and the EU ban while also illustrating the cultural beauty and connectivity within the Inuit community.
The filmmaker speaks to former members of IFAW and Greenpeace, uncovering the truth about anti-sealing campaigns: the immense profit the companies make off of this campaign, the lies they use to initiate it, and how they are aware of the hunting ban implications on the Inuit communities.
The seal hunt is part of a circular system that sustains Inuit communities, which the film emphasizes. Hunters make long commutes by snowmobile to hunt, catching one or two seals a day. They distribute the meat, feeding nearly the whole community. After a collective process of preparing the skins for sale, the skins are shipped off to European markets, and the profits are given to the hunters. With this money, hunters purchase more gasoline and bullets for the next hunt. Without the incoming profit from selling sealskins, the system collapses, as do Inuit communities.
The documentary details the link between the survival of Inuit communities and the cultural institution of the seal hunt. If the Inuit permanently lose this source of income, they will have no option but to turn to resource extraction for profit. This solution would have significant environmental ramifications of its own, including aquatic contamination.
The film emphasizes the importance of Indigenous stories of resistance and resilience like the ones presented in Angry Inuk.
It’s a must-see, especially this year, as many Canadians throw on their patriotic hats to celebrate 150 years of a country built on colonial encroachment.
