Arnait Video Productions: Inuit Women's Collective Filmmaking, Coalitional Politics, and a Globalized Arctic

• Published in: Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies
• Main Authors: MacKenzie, Scott, Stenport, Anna Westerståhl
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Duke University Press 2016
• Subjects: Arctic; Canada; Hélène; Igloolik; Nunavut; inuit
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/02705346-3662066; https://read.dukeupress.edu/camera-obscura/article-pdf/31/3%20(93)/153/401730/CO93_08MacKenzie_FF.pdf

Arnait Video Productions is one of the most aesthetically diverse feminist collectives in the world. Founded in 1991 in Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada, by Madeline Piujuq Ivalu and Marie-Hélène Cousineau as the first women's Inuit filmmaking collective, Arnait engages in collective media production from Inuit women's perspectives with an explicit focus on gender. Arnait's video art, animation, fiction features, television programs, and documentaries address issues faced by women struggling for the recognition of indigenous and minoritarian cultures. The success of Arnait builds on the strategies deployed by the well-known Nunavut-based video and film collective Isuma and also radically departs from it by including women in key production roles. In doing so, Arnait foregrounds women's stories and perspectives from an Inuit point of view and thereby counteracts preexisting yet unexamined “masculine models” of representation. The collective's goals include employing women-only or women-dominant production crews, while embracing traditional forms of Inuit narration and culture.