112 minutes – Drama, Inuit
Language: Inuktitut, Danish, English
Festival release date: September 7, 2006 (Toronto International Film Festival)
Release date: March 11, 2006
Production company: Isuma
Canadian distributor: Alliance Atlantis
The Journals of Knud Rasmussen was inspired by the actual journals of a Danish anthropologist, Knud Rasmussen (Jens Jorn Spottag). Set primarily in and around Igloolik in 1922, the film depicts the encounter between a group of Inuit in Arctic Canada led by one of the last shamans of the Canadian Inuit, Aua, and Rasmussen and two other Danish ethnographers and explorers, Therkel Mathiassen and Peter Freuchen. THey lived with the extended family of the Inuit shaman Avva (Pakak Innukshuk) that included his wife Orulu (Neeve Irngaut Uttak) and, most importantly, his daughter Apak (Leah Angutimarik), who has some of his powers.
