\n<\/p>\n
But before we get into the first of these films, shot in the 1970s, we need to step back and take a look at the three previous decades, so we can better understand the context in which those first films were made.<\/p>\n
The people and landscapes of the Far North had fascinated settlers since the arrival of Europeans in North America in the 16th century. The Arctic was always depicted as an almost mythical place\u2014one that was exotic and untouched. This depiction persisted, from the accounts of British explorers Martin Frobisher and Sir John Franklin, and the Scandinavians Vilhjalmur Stefansson and Knud Rasmussen, through to the images of Robert Flaherty\u2019s famous 1922 documentary Nanook of the North<\/em> and the documentary tradition that followed it\u2014as well as in literature, popular imagery, Hollywood films, and photography. In short, the Far North became a dreamscape onto which white men projected their fantasies of purity and exoticism.<\/p>\n Western culture created a mythical vision of these vast spaces, and stereotypes of their inhabitants. In the collective settler imagination, the \u201cEskimo,\u201d the inappropriate term used at the time, quickly became a primitive figure with an incredible capacity for adaptation, able to live happily in a hostile environment and under the most extreme conditions.<\/p>\n During the 1940s and 1950s, the NFB sent film crews to the Northwest Territories and Baffin Island to record images of Inuit. The resulting films were intended to document their arts, craftsmanship and way of life, but instead presented Inuit as exotic curiosities: tireless workers and experienced hunters and fishers, who, in the eyes of these non-Inuit filmmakers, lived in perfect harmony with nature. Inuit were depicted as having simple but effective tools, and living in keeping with their beliefs and traditions, all while easily adapting to the changes brought by the white man.<\/p>\nInuit before Inuit cinema<\/strong><\/h3>\n