INUK (2010)—An Informal Conversation With Ole Jørgen Hammeken

Roxie Releasing is proud to present the U.S. theatrical premiere of Inuk (2010), a coming-of-age drama directed by Mike Magidson. Inuk will open in San Francisco at the historic Roxie Theater on September 27. A national release will follow after the turn of the year.

Co-written by Magidson, Ole Jørgen Hammeken (who stars in the film), and anthropologist Jean-Michel Huctin, Inuk premiered theatrically in Greenland in May 2011, becoming a major commercial success, selling more tickets in its home country than such American blockbusters as Avatar or The Twilight Saga. It went on to become a winner of multiple international film festival awards (including Best Film, Director and Editing at the Savannah Film Festival), as well as being chosen as Greenland's Oscar® submission in 2012. In that capacity, I caught the film as part of the Awards Buzz sidebar at the 2013 Palm Springs International Film Festival, where it sold out every screening and was included in Best of the Fest.

Inspired by the "Children's Home Uummannaq" situated 500 km north of the Arctic Circle in the small town of Uummannaq, Inuk covers a journey from Greenland's south to its north as an homage to the origins of the Inuit people. The story concerns troubled 16-year-old Inuk (played as a teen by newcomer Gaba Petersen), who witnesses his father's death in a tragic dog-sledding accident. Raised in the south in Greenland's capital Nuuk by his increasingly alcoholic mother and a violent step-father, Inuk becomes cut off from his former life in the wilds.

One morning, after pulling the half-frozen boy out of an abandoned car, social services sends Inuk north to a foster home on a tiny island in the middle of the Arctic sea-ice, where Inuk swiftly becomes delinquent and unruly. His foster guardian and teacher, Aviaaja (Rebekka Jørgensen) pairs him up with bear hunter Ikuma (Ole Jørgen Hammeken) so that he may learn wisdom. The taciturn hunter's attachment to the land and knowledge of traditional ways offers a glimpse of a different life for the troubled teen. But Ikuma himself is suffering self-doubt after his own world begins to decline due to the effects of global warming. Harnessing the dogs, the odd couple embarks on a seal-hunting expedition—a visceral sequence handled with style and verve by Magidson—and Inuk comes face-to-face with his past and reawakens the old injury that has affected Ikuma's life. Despite the bitter cold and their treacherous surroundings, the most difficult journey they both must make will be the one within themselves.

With stunning cinematography by Xavier Liberman and Franck Rabel, shot on the sea ice in sub-zero polar temperatures, Inuk features performances by teenagers from the Uummannaq Children's Home, all playing roles close to their real lives. Created as an original road-movie on a sea of ice, Inuk is both an authentic story of Greenland today—a country torn between tradition and modernity—and a universal story about the quest for identity, transmission and rebirth after the deepest of wounds.

Unfortunately, I watched Inuk at the Palm Springs International on screener on my laptop after fortuitously meeting Ole Jørgen Hammeken and composer Justin Michael La Vallee in the press lounge. My schedule didn't allow me to watch the film's final PSIFF screening and I didn't have the chance to meet director Magidson. I hoped even then that an opportunity might arise in the future where I could view Inuk on screen in-cinema. When it didn't show up at the San Francisco International, I thought I had missed my chance; but, the Roxie has redeemed all regrets.

In retrospect, I feel honored to have met Hammeken who plays the hunter Ikuma who—along with Inuk—has had his heart frozen by loss. Both stare at the world with eyes of ice. How the two find each other and heal each other through traditional Inuit ways is the driving momentum of this classic coming of age tale, bolstered by breathtaking austere landscapes, wonderful footage of dog teams at work, and a soundtrack that mixes modern and ancient melodies to atmospheric effect.

Hammeken advised he wasn't originally considered for the role of Ikuma, admitting he was not truly a hunter, even though familiar with dog sledding through expedition work. The hunter that was originally cast to play the role of Ikuma had to drop out of the project because hunting season started and his priorities were firm: hunting took precedence over filmmaking. As the bristly Ikuma whose eyesight (and confidence) are failing, troubled by the loss of his son, Hammeken delivers a pitch-perfect performance. When I teased him that he would now become the go-to actor for future Greenlandic productions, he laughed and said no, no, that would not be the case, though he has been working on securing footage of his northern expeditions and, undeniably, has enjoyed traveling the world accompanying Inuk, most recently to Seoul, South Korea.

Hammeken and I swapped expedition stories; he in Greenland, me in Central America. I admitted how I don't much like ice and snow and vividly recall his smiling reaction—ice, after all, comprises the Inuit soul—but, after seeing Inuk, nothing would be more of an adventure than accompanying Hammeken on one of his expeditions. I’ve only seen Greenland from the air on transatlantic flights, but recall it being beautifully blue from high above. How wondrous it would be to experience it from a dog sled! To see shadows shift across the ice as in one particularly memorable sequence in Inuk.

We discussed the documentary Chasing Ice. He knew some of the people involved in that project. We both expressed disbelief that there are still those—in the face of surmounting evidence—who disclaim global warming. He has seen firsthand how the ice is going “bad.” For him it is dramatic, definitive evidence. He wonders if Americans can possibly comprehend? Only by degrees, I responded. It’s now official: 2012 was the hottest year in American history, by one degree. And look at all the damage that caused!

My fingers have been crossed that Hammeken and I might have the chance to cross paths again, and it will be a delight to finally meet the film’s director, Mike Magidson, who will be present for a Q&A after the film’s first screening. This proves a poignant homecoming as Magidson is originally from the Bay Area, born at the height of the 1967 “summer of love” in Oakland, California. After getting a college degree, Mike immediately set off to Los Angeles where he was cast in a series of small theatre productions. Unable to pay his rent with his modest actor fees, Mike took a job as an apprentice editor with one of Hollywood’s top ranked trailer producers, Intralink Film Graphic Design, where he began to dream of a career as a filmmaker. Following his heart and a strong curiosity for French culture, in 1992 Mike packed up a suitcase, and moved to Paris, France. After several years editing for such reputable directors as Pan Nalin, Antoine de Maximy, and Jean-Michel Carré, in 1998 Mike borrowed a friend’s camera and made his first award winning documentary, Kanada. Eleven years later, Mike has written and directed over twenty documentaries and shorts. Inuk is his first feature-length narrative film.

ROXIE THEATER: I WAKE UP DREAMING: 99 44/100% NOIR—The Evening Class Interview With Wayne Shellabarger

Elliot Lavine [interviews one and two] continues to entertain his San Franciscan audiences with noir oddities culled from studio vaults, private collections and Blu-rays, curatorially assembled into his 2013 edition of "I Wake Up Dreaming: 99 44/100% Noir", which continues its run through Thursday, May 23, 2013 at the Roxie. Dennis Harvey wrote up the series for The San Francisco Bay Guardian, as did Erin Blackwell for The Bay Area Reporter, Pam Grady for Cinezine Kane, Casey Burchby for The SF Weekly, and G. Allen Johnson for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Ever ahead of the curve when it comes to value added to the theatrical experience, Elliot invited Wayne Shellabarger to contribute a slide show of comic book panels to complement the series inbetween screenings and the effect has been stunning. I cornered Shellabarger in a dark alley near the Roxie where, unfortunately, the trash cans were only grey.

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Michael Guillén: Wayne, how did you become interested in comic book panels as a slide show project to accompany Elliot Lavine's "I Wake Up Dreaming: 99 44/100% Noir" series for the Roxie Theater?

Wayne Shellabarger: I had access to a large digital archive of comics and—as I started reading through them—I discovered artists and stories that I had never heard of or read about or seen; most importantly seen reprinted or anthologized. The vibrancy, urgency and energy of certain panels gave me a buzz—whatever you want to call it—and struck me for some reason. I felt the visceral energy of these panels. They hit me. So I began to collect them through screencaps for my personal enjoyment and to look at again for later reference.

I built up quite a library of these and decided to review what I had captured by setting up a slide show to sit back and watch them. What I discovered was that—rather than looking at a series of panels—the slide show created a third form. It wasn't cinema, it wasn't comics, and it wasn't just a slide show. The way that the panels related to each other and were juxtaposed against each other in non-predictable ways created an interesting effect. Watching this slide show for the first time, I felt something new since seeing the panels as I had collected them. I thought, "This would be a really great thing to show before a movie." Especially before a film noir, because what I was collecting was mainly crime comics.

Guillén: In some respects, I consider your slide show project an installation piece.

Shellabarger: Whatever form this slide show has ended up taking at this festival is something I never intended. It unfolded organically and kind of happened as I kept working at it, looking at the panels more, adding to the slide show.

Guillén: Elliot Lavine is a comic book fan? He's been posting several comic book panels on his Facebook timeline. Is that your influence?

Shellabarger: Probably, yeah, though he posted a lot of cool comic book stuff before I started doing this.

Guillén: What caught my eye with your slide show project is that—although the appropriation and recontextualization of comic book panels is readily apparent in American culture through the paintings of Roy Lichtenstein—his project remains essentially a parody. What you're doing is more complementary or supplementary, especially with regard to partnering it with noir films, because you have culled out a collection of panels that are genre-specific.

Shellabarger: I would like to avoid using words like "re-appropriate" or "recontextualize" because there was no brain work that went into this, no intellectual effort at all, the panels just hit me at a gut level.

Guillén: Well, I'd argue that gut reactions fall within the domain of emotional intelligence, which doesn't necessarily have anything to do with intellectuality, and is no less smart for it. As I watched your slide show at the festival, and monitored how well-received it was by your audience, it made me aware of the project's visceral aesthetics: the colors are primary; the frames are succinct, self-explanatory and complete in themselves. Your skill as the compiler of these frames is to single out, for wont of a better term, the focus through light (and darkness)—and, in your case, color—on the essential dramatic moment.

Shellabarger: Yeah! For every one I picked, I saw hundreds that didn't do it for me. It was not like there were gems lying everywhere, for me personally at least, and what I respond to might be different for someone else, but it seems like a lot of people are responding to the selfsame elements that I'm responding to.

Guillén: Do you come from an art history background?

Shellabarger: Well, I've collected comics since I was a kid and then I did art history in college and I draw and illustrate and things like that. Once this slide show started to take shape, then it began to speak to me and dictated what it needed to build itself. Once I had in mind that it might be shown in this form, then it was easier to find a path—"This will work. This goes with this theme or that motif."—which I discovered as I was reviewing my collection. It's not that I'm imposing these themes or motifs. I'm receptive to what's already there.

Guillén: Which is where I would agree with you that this is not recontextualized art. If anything, it's punctuating or emphasizing what's intrinsic to the images.

Shellabarger: Or celebrating them. I'm not trying to make something different out of them.

Guillén: The simple genius of this project is the converging of two popular forms that focus on generic elements.

Shellabarger: One really nice surprise that I noticed was that—if these are noir panels (and I do think there's a hardcore noir sensibility to every single one of them)—they're at the same time the most garish, brightly-hued, and colorful comics, much more so than the comics I grew up reading in the '70s and '80s. For example, there will be a guy walking down a deserted alley and the trash cans will be a bright blue, bright green and bright red. The coloring works perfectly and doesn't take away from the dark attitude of the panel. It's very strange that it works.

Guillén: Even as a child reading comics, I became aware early on of the importance of inking and the individuals responsible for adding color to the stories. I noticed how sometimes the bleeding of color added to the effect, whether intended or not, and that quality especially stood out watching your panels projected onto a large screen.

You mentioned earlier that you were taken by panels unfamiliar to you. I was sitting in the theater with a fellow comics enthusiast and both of us couldn't recognize or source a single frame.

Shellabarger: Yeah, I thought that was another really attractive trait. What attracted me was that I was unfamiliar with a lot of these artists, probably because most of them are anonymous to this day in a lot of cases, except for people like Craig Yoe [official website].

Guillén: So these comics are from the '50s?

Shellabarger: Yeah, they're late '40s and then early '50s before the Comics Code. It seemed like it took the noir sensibility a little longer to inject itself in comics than in film. I noticed that it's in 1948 that it starts in comics more.

Guillén: So did the Comics Code prohibit these kinds of images?

Shellabarger: Exactly. That's what it was designed to do. I mean, look at them! They're terribly harmful. [Laughs.]

Guillén: But then if you look at contemporary comics they're filled with violence.

Shellabarger: Yeah, but it's senseless, not beautiful.

Guillén: So what you're offering in your slide show are significant pre-Code panels that mirror but don't actually time with pre-Code film?

Shellabarger: Right. The same phenomenon happened in comics as happened in film but some 20+ years later.

Guillén: Other than by way of this slide show at the festival, do you intend to further this project in any way?

Shellabarger: A friend of mine compelled me to gather some of the panels together that he'd seen me post to accompany a musical performance that he was doing and that's when I started to gather them with the idea in mind of presenting them publically, rather than just for my personal use. So that's made me aware that I can build different programs to accompany different events, be they music or film. So there might be more slide shows coming. I've also collected a lot of romance panels, and monster panels, and surrealistic panels.

Guillén: About how many images did you use for this slide show?

Shellabarger: Just under 500, about 450, in constant rotation. The randomness of it helps underscore its effect.

Guillén: We're saying "slide show", but are these actually slides?

Shellabarger: No, they're jpegs and they're intended to run in a completely random order. Whatever juxtapositions and connections people make between the panels is what's most interesting about the project. The randomness allows new juxtapositions and connections to be constantly made and I find that stimulating, and—combined with the soundtrack underneath them to glue the images together—I'm surprised how well it works.

Guillén: Did you compile the soundtrack as well?

Shellabarger: I actually got a couple of my buddies—Tom Lynch and Jeremy Wheat, who are as much into music as I am into comics and who share my sensibility on a lot of things—to create the soundtrack. They hooked in to what I was wanting to do and they came up with these great mixes of '40s-'50s jazz and TV crime soundtracks.

Guillén: Thanks, Wayne, for taking the time to talk with me.

Shellabarger: Thanks to Elliot Lavine for creating a forum for this project!