Group Hunting on the Spring Ice
From the Netsilik Eskimo series
Directed by Quentin Brown
Group Hunting on the Spring Ice Part 2
Group Hunting on the Spring Ice Part 3
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 Group Hunting on the Spring Ice
Part 1, color, 34 minutes - click
here to preview this film
Late June, and much of the land is bare. There are sounds of running
water, and melt ponds shine everywhere. The woman carries heather and
moss to camp and the man makes a whirling bullroarer for the boy.
Another child pretends to drive a dog sled. A woman is working sinews
into bowstrings, while another is busy with a seal skin. A woman
prepares to cook a meal and a man makes a bow from bone and sinews.
It is a demanding task to combine such materials into a strong supple
weapon; the result is pleasing to the man. The next day the men move
out on the sea ice with a dog to look for seal pups.
Part 2, color, 28 minutes - click
here to preview this film
The men are out on the sea ice and the women work at the tasks of
camp. Seal skins are pegged to dry in the sun and a woman, baby on
her back, picks over a pile of gulls. The birds are skinned and then
go into the pot with water from a melt pond. A baby sucks on a bone.
The people eat, and then the women visit an old man in his tent. Now
the women are out gathering moss for the fires and we see the birds
and flowers common to the area. A woman skins a seal pup while
another sews skins for a tent. The children play at making camp, and
some of the older girls pretend to nurse the fat pups. Then the
adults join the fun, playing at juggling.
Part 3, color, 33 minutes - click
here to preview this film
The men are moving about on the sea ice, probing for unsafe ice and
watching for seals. The snow cover is nearly gone now, and the
breathing holes have widened. The men sit and wait. One makes a
strike with his harpoon and others come to watch. They are ready to
eat and relish the good warm blood and the liver. Another hunter
succeeds, and then another but this one loses his catch when his thong
breaks and the seal slides back into the water. But the party has
three seals in tow when they return to camp, and soon the women have
the meat exposed and all eat. Then the blubber is packed into the
sealskin bags and the men haul it away to the cache.
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
Stalking Seal on the Spring Ice
Building a Kayak
Fishing at the Stone Weir
Related Films:
Alaskan Eskimo series
Through These Eyes