Visual Effects
Follow Dallas Arcand, an urban youth, as he heads down the mystical Red Road to re-connect with new and traditional elements of First Nations culture. Dallas is a world champion hoop dancer and hip-hop artist aiming to connect urban Indigenous young people to their rural ancestral histories. He's a 7th generation Cree from Alexander (Kipohtakaw) First Nation.
This animated short tells the story of Qalupalik, a part-human sea monster that lives deep in the Arctic Ocean and preys on children who do not listen to their parents or elders. That is the fate of Angutii, a young boy who refuses to help out in his family’s camp and who plays by the shoreline... until one day Qalupalik seizes him and drags him away. Angutii's father, a great hunter, must then embark on a lengthy kayak journey to try and bring his son home.
Layering real-life details with an otherworldly magic, Thanadoula recounts the story of an end-of-life doula brought to her calling through the loss of her beloved sister.
This animated short is a tragic and twisted story about the dangers of revenge. A cruel mother mistreats her son, feeding him dog meat and forcing him to sleep in the cold. A loon, who tells the boy that his mother blinded him, helps the child regain his eyesight. Then the boy seeks revenge, releasing his mother’s lifeline as she harpoons a whale and watching her drown. Based on a portion of the epic Inuit legend “The Blind Boy and the Loon.”
Centered on a confrontation between the last monster bear and an Inuit hunter, Giant Bear is a chilling short that brings an ancient story out of the North.
Inspired by an Inuit poem first assigned to paper in 1927, this animated short evokes the beauty and power of nature, as well as the bond between mother and daughter. As her daughter looks on, an Inuit woman creates a wall hanging filled with images of the spectacular Arctic landscape and traditional Inuit objects and iconography. Soon the boundaries between art and reality begin to dissolve.
In this animated short, a self-important colonial explorer emerges from a sailing ship and plants a flag on the Arctic ice, as a bemused Inuit hunter looks on. Then the explorer plants another, and another, and another, while the hunter, clearly not impressed that his land has been “discovered,” quietly goes about his business. In this charming and humorous re-imagining of first contact between Inuit and European, Jonathan Wright brings us the story of a savvy hunter and the ill-equipped explorer he outwits.
Ethel's childhood ends abruptly when her mother flies away, leaving Ethel alone to care for an isolated homestead and her younger siblings. As a merciless winter descends upon them, Ethel must decide whether to resign herself to fate or to try her luck in the wide world...
