Hunter, artist and media activist Zacharias Kunuk is one of the world's most widely respected aboriginal film-makers. He is president of Igloolik Isuma Productions, and co-founder of Isuma.TV the recently launched internet video and multimedia platform for Inuit and Aboriginal content. At the Arctic Indigenous Languages Symposium in Tromso, Norway in October 2008, Kunuk declared, in reference to his work using new technology to protect indigenous language and cultural identities, that "Inuit communities must connect at the same speed as their governments and mining companies." Northern communities currently have the slowest and most expensive internet service of any region in Canada. Kunuk himself was nine years old when his family gave up their nomadic lifestyle and settled in the new government town of Igloolik. In 1981, Kunuk sold three sculptures in Montreal and brought home the Arctic’s first video camera to a community that did not yet have television. As a co-founder and creative member of the Igloolik Isuma Productions team, Kunuk’s credits include the 1 x 60 dramas Qaggiq (1989), Nunaqpa (1991) and Saputi (1993); the 13 x 30 drama series Nunavut (1995); documentaries Nipi (Voice, 1999) and Nanugiurutiga (My First Polar Bear, 2001); and the internationally acclaimed feature film, Atanarjuat The Fast Runner (2000) which won the Golden Camera at the Cannes Film Festival 2002. Kunuk is recipient of an Aboriginal Achievement Award in 2000, National Arts Award in 2001, was chosen The Globe and Mail’s Man of the Year in the Arts for 2002 and appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada. In 2005 he, along with co-director [[Norman Cohn]], shot the feature film The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, which was released in 2007. Kunuk still lives full time in Igloolik where he hunts as often as he can.

http://www.isuma.ca
http://www.isuma.tv