Building a Kayak
From the Netsilik Eskimo series
Directed by Quentin Brown
Building a Kayak Part 2
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About Building a Kayak
Part 1, color, 32 minutes - click
here to preview this film
Now it is July - summer. The run-off is in full spate and open water
shows offshore. Ice cakes melt on the shingle. On the bay are ducks.
It is time to build a kayak, a task shared by two men. They gather
materials: valuable scraps of wood, bone, seal skins and sinews. Now
there is much cutting, fitting, joining and binding. The woman helps
by cutting additional thongs, scraping skins, providing food. She
must also amuse the child who seems left out by the single-minded work
of the men. Then the work breaks and a man harpoons a fish in a tide
pool; all share the pleasure of fresh food.
Part 2, color, 33 minutes - click
here to preview this film
As the kayak takes shape there are more ribs to be split and shaped to
fit, more soaking, bending and binding, more skins to soak and scrape
and soak again before stretching them tightly on the frame and sewing
them in place. Now the outer rim is put in position and, while the
ice floats in the bay, the men launch and test their new kayak with
evident pleasure in its able performance.
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 Caribou Crossing Place
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
Fishing at the Stone Weir
Related Films:
Alaskan Eskimo series
Through These Eyes