Testifying:
Norman Cohn

Norman Cohn of Igloolik Isuma Productions has collaborated with Zacharias Kunuk on the Cannes- and Genie Award-winning feature Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner and The Journals of Knud Rasmussen. Like those films, Isuma’s next project, Before Tomorrow, is supported by Telefilm.

‘Recently we were trying to get Telefilm marketing assistance funds to support distributing [Knud Rasmussen] into remote aboriginal communities that are off the grid of the subsidized Canadian distribution system. This was an instance where the money normally available to assist taking an aboriginal-language film into aboriginal-language communities was minimal, whereas large sums of money were available for subsidizing Canadian films in Canadian cinemas.

‘So we had to get Telefilm to acknowledge that aboriginal audiences, just like aboriginal filmmakers, do figure in the national system, and are not to be set aside in a ghetto of affirmative action. Telefilm made an adjustment, and we got the money to distribute the film in those communities. So, in the end, you are what you do, and over the course of time we saw a huge government bureaucracy open up and finance Inuktitut-language films, and we commend Telefilm for that.’