Scenes Through Snow-Goggles: Take Two

by Nancy Wachowich

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Filming shamanic rituals

Today is the
day that the crew and actors are filming the tiviaq ritual scene inside the
snowhouses. Inuit were formerly a nomadic people. Throughout much of the year
they travelled in small extended or nuclear family groups. People would go
without seeing their family members and friends for months or sometimes years
on end. When two or three groups came across each other on the land, and food
was a plenty, it was time to celebrate.

Children
would be betrothed during this time and marriages would be arranged. A large
ceremonial igloo (called a qaggiq) would be built for camp members to come
together to feast, sing, dance, play games and perform various rituals.

Shamans would
compete, showing off their tricks. I have read that they would do things like
levitate, fly around the igloo, shape-shift into different animals and visit
other faraway worlds under the sea ice. Tiviaq's were spirit beings that played
a part in these rituals. That is all that I can say about them here. The Isuma
directors want this scene to be a secret, so we will have to wait until the
film is out in theatres. Suffice to say that the aim of today's shoot was to
enact the ritual that would have occured when Rasmussen's party met with Aua's
group.

Travelling
out to the set this morning, I was a bit apprehensive. I suspected that
re-enacting a ritual may be a difficult task for some of the Iglulingmiut
members of the crew, especially the older ones. Christianity was brought to the
region around the time that the movie is set (1920s). The missionaries who
arrived to the north preached that shamanism was the work of the devil. They
preached hell and damnation for those who continued with shamanistic rituals.
Many of the Inuit elders who I interviewed in the early 1900s in Pond Inlet
refused to talk about shamanism. They clammed up when the topic arose. I sensed
that this might be a delicate shoot.

Does anyone know what is happening?

That is the
phrase that I heard most today. At least from the non-Inuit crew members who, I
suspect, like me, have a more rigid notion of time than their Inuit colleagues.
My friends who work for the movies down in Vancouver and Toronto say that much
of their days are often spent standing around and waiting to hurry. My friends
who live in the Arctic say that trips out on the land can often start like
that. Similarly, my first few hours on the set at the igloo palace were spent
hovering outside the igloos with the cast and other crew members, stamping my
feet to ward against the cold, and chatting.

Everyone
seemed to be waiting for the filming to start, yet no one knew quite when it
was going to happen. As the day progressed, the wind picked up and whipped
right through my arctic winter parka. I headed to the catering tent for some
hot chocolate.

The blue elastic hair tie

In the
catering tent, the talk was all about a blue elastic hair tie. The catering
tent is a transitional site between the settlement and the set. A few minutes
walk from the igloo palace, it is where the snowmobiles drop off the actors and
crew so that the engines will not be heard on set.

Manning the
tent is Gilles Choquette (also known as Ungalaaq). Walkie-talkie in hand, he
runs thermoses of coffee, hot chocolate and tea down to the actors when they
radio him a request. Lines of plastic coffee cups with people's names
felt-penned on them are hung on nails on the wall. With Gilles were a group of
Greenlandic and Iglulingmiut women actors getting dressed for the shoot. They
were darkening their faces with skin-tints and doing their hair in braids in an
effort to look more "traditional". They were also admiring each other's skin
clothing. Piujualuk! That is the
Inuktitut way of saying "Isn't that nice!".

The woman who
plays Nutarajuk (Sidonie Ungalaq) had a blue elastic in her hair, so the women
were going back and forth among themselves about how to cover it up. Inuit
women would certainly not have had blue pony-tail holders in the 1920s. What if
it shows up in a scene? Do they use a felt pen to make the blue elastic black,
replace it , or cover it up a leather tie? We can't have a blue heir elastic
show up in a 1920s Inuit ritual.

So many cameras

Warmer and
re-fuelled, I moved back to the igloo palace, where the temperature and tempo
inside the big central igloo was picking up as actors and crew members started
to congregate. A snow bench padded with caribou furs lined the walls. I sat
myself near the doorway with my notepad and pencil and watched as actors in
elaborate fur costumes gathered around and Sila, CBC, Isuma and Barok Film
videographers filmed the event.

There were
also individual actors and crewmembers with their own digital cameras. Norman
Cohn and Zach Kunuk stood near the centre of the Igloo and discussed the events
to be filmed that evening. The evening was being pitched as kind of planned and
kind of spontaneous and improvisational. "This will be like a party", Norman
Cohn said to some people he was speaking with, "We will see what unfolds!"

Two flashes
went off. A group of Igloolik actors began to sing traditional Ajaajaa songs.
Two of the men started to drum dance in tempo. One drum dancer had five lenses
on him at one time. He did not seem to notice. People up here are used to
having cameras pointed at them.

The event takes over

How much of
this was filming and how much of this was ritual? Did the cameras affect what
was going on? Who knows. The singing became louder as the Iglulingmiut actors
prepared themselves for the ritual to take place. Greenlanders, Danes and other
white folk who did not know the songs sat quietly on the side and drank in the
atmosphere. All of the sudden, the singers stopped and everyone headed over the
catering tent for some beef stew and spaghetti. After dinner, those of us who
were not actors were asked to leave. What happenned with the tiviaq ritual? We
will watch it at the theatres...

Over and out.