At the Caribou Crossing Place
From the Netsilik Eskimo series
Directed by Quentin Brown
At the Caribou Crossing Place Part 2
institutional price includes public performance rights
Paypal purchases ship via UPS Ground only
contact us for overnight shipping, purchase / international orders and rental / 16mm sales and rental
About At the Caribou Crossing Place
Part 1, color, 30 minutes - click
here to preview this film
The time is early autumn. The woman wakes and dresses the boy. He
practices with his sling while she spreads a caribou skin to dry. The
boy picks berries and then the men come in their kayak with another
caribou. This is skinned, and soon night falls. In the morning, one
man leaves with his bow while the other makes a fishing mannick, a
bait of caribou meat. The woman works at the skins, this time
cleaning sinews and hanging them to dry. The man repairs his arrows
and then sets a snare for a gull. The child stones the snared gull and
then plays hunter, using some antlers for a target. His father makes
him a spinning top.
Part 2, color, 29 minutes - click
here to preview this film
Two men arrive at the camp and the four build from stones a long row
of manlike figures, inukshult, down toward the water. They wait for
caribou and then chase them toward the stone figures and so into the
water where other men in kayaks spear them. The dead animals are
floated ashore and skinned. The boy plays with the visitors, the
woman cooks the meat, the men crack the bones and eat the marrow, and
then feast on the plentiful meat.
About the Netsilik Eskimo series
These films reveal the live reality of traditional Eskimo life before
the European acculturation. The Netsilik Eskimos of the Pelly Bay
region in the Canadian Arctic had long lived apart from other people
and had depended entirely on the land and their own ingenuity to
sustain life through the rigors of the Arctic year. The filming was
done during the summers of 1963 and 1964 and in the late winter of
1965 under the ethnographic direction of Dr. Asen Balikci of the
University of Montréal, assisted by Guy Mary-Rousseliere,
O.M.I., both anthropologists of wide Arctic experience. Quentin Brown
was Producer-Director, and Kevin Smith the Executive Producer for the
series.
other films in the Netsilik Eskimo series:
At the Autumn River Camp
At the Winter Sea Ice Camp
Jigging for Lake Trout
At the Spring Sea Ice Camp
Group Hunting on the Spring Ice
Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice
Building a Kayak
Fishing at the Stone Weir
Related Films:
Alaskan Eskimo series
Through These Eyes