Dawson City International Short Film Festival

Saturday, 7-9pm
At the Confluence

Silent Messengers
Bill MacGillIvray, Canada, 2005, documentary, 94m
This extraordinary documentary explores the mysteries of the Inuksuit, those powerful objects that mark the pristine landscape of the North. As enigmatic as the stone slabs of Stonehenge, the Inuksuit are sacred signs of the Inuit and their ancestors — the first people to inhabit the Arctic.

With acclaimed ethnogeographer and photographer Norman Hallendy and well-known sculptor-actor Natar Ungalaq (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner) as their guides, the filmmakers traverse the open and sometimes forbidding terrain around Cape Dorset and Igloolik, in search of these stone symbols and their meanings.

This journey offers up staggeringly beautiful images of the Arctic. Remote and haunting, the Inuksuit stand as the signposts of a rich way of life, one sadly in danger of disappearing.

Silent Messengers allows us a privileged and intimate encounter with the land. Enhanced by a brilliant musical score, this stunning work is at once respectful and personal, inspiring and human.

FILMMAKERS BILL MACGILLIVRAY & TERRY GREENLAW WILL HOST A Q&A following this screening.

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