Ep. 100: Can a Film Preserve an Endangered Language?
This week on TIFF Long Take, Geoff sits down with filmmaker and producer Jonathan Frantz. A member of ‘Isuma’ – an Inuit media and arts collective founded by Zacharias Kunuk – Frantz recently produced ‘Edge of the Knife’, a 19th century set drama directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown, which is particularly notable as the first feature length film spoken only in Haidi, an endangered language spoken fluently by fewer than 20 people. The film, which features a Haida cast and was made in collaboration with the Council of the Haida Nation, premiered at TIFF in 2018.
Frantz talks about the history and mission of the Isuma collective, the long but rewarding process of making ‘Edge of the Knife’, and what he hopes the film with do for the Haida language and nation.
He also discusses working with his collaborators Gwaai Edenshaw, Helen Haig-Brown, and Zacharias Kunuk, how he approaches these projects as a non-indigenous person, and the best resources for movie lovers looking to see more Indigenous films.
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