Messages from the Past (1991)

• 67%
• 1991
• Documentary
• Zacharias Kunuk
• Paul Aarulaaq Quassa

In 1991, Igloolik Isuma Productions gathered 13 Igloolik elders for a week of discussion, to choose and then record 24 traditional ajaja songs considered most important to preserve for the future: where did the songs come from, how where they made and how have they been passed down generation to generation? Each elder remembers their own family's ajaja songs and explains how they were created by poets taking their words from their life experiences. The video, translated and subtitled for the first time, includes priceless footage of these elders singing and drumming the songs, and their playfully combative and humorous interactions are a joy to watch. The process also allowed Isuma to publish a full CD of the selected songs and to use and preserve many of them in Isuma's films over the next 25 years.