Frozen in Film: Alaska Eskimos in the Movies

• Main Author: Fienup-Riordan, Ann
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2015
• Subjects: eskimo*; inuit; Alaska
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694174.003.0004

This chapter examines the history of Alaskan Eskimo representations, primarily in Hollywood, as Fienup-Riordan offers a detailed analysis of the career of Inuit film star Ray Mala, who starred in the the 1933 MGM production Eskimo , directed by W.S. Van Dyke, and the first film shot totally in the Iñupiaq language. The chapter also considers the ways in which Alaskan Eskimos have worked within the Hollywood system in a sporadic manner from the 1930s to the present. Fienup-Riordan also addresses Ken Kwapis’s Hollywood film Big Miracle (2012) before moving on to examine television (such as KYUK-TV), video, and cinematic self-representations of Yu’pik culture in the twenty first century, including as part of community activism in an age of climate change.