We have been filming with a number of Inuit artists, and their point of view about their art has been uniformly extremely practical. If you talk to an artist from my culture about their work, they talk about inspiration, about esthetics, about trying to communicate ideas, or in some cases, about stuff that's completely unintelligible to the average human being. But without exception, the artists we have been filming up here have talked money, about materials, and about logistics. Maybe they got offered a job so they started weaving, maybe people were buying theor sculptures so it seemed like a good idea to keep making them, and so on.
I read something once about Inuit sculpture a long time ago that really struck a chord; I read that when they start working with a stone they don't decide in advance what it's going to be, they start carving it and discover the shape within it as they work. I spent years editing documentaries, I would quote that line a lot when I was talking about what an editor does. Sometimes a film becomes something rather different from what was planned, and you only find out what it should be by starting to work on it. People who watch what you've done often seem to discover things you hadn't realized were there, or at least hadn't realized were perceptible. So you sort of discover the film you are working on within the great big pile of raw material you start with.
We filmed with one of the best-known Inuit carvers in Canada, Looty Pijamini, and I had heard that he had been quoted as saying something much like this phrase I remembered hearing. So I asked him about it. Well guess what, he says something rather different. He said that he doesn't start carving without a plan, because then he would waste material. And he does try to imagine the shape within the stone, but mostly so that he can come up with a shape that more or less matches the shape of the stone, because then there will be less work to do to carve the excess away. Totally practical.
I am going to have to stop using that line about documentary editing now. That's too bad, it was my artist's statement, and now I will have to come up with a new one. Perhaps something completely unintelligible.
I read something once about Inuit sculpture a long time ago that really struck a chord; I read that when they start working with a stone they don't decide in advance what it's going to be, they start carving it and discover the shape within it as they work. I spent years editing documentaries, I would quote that line a lot when I was talking about what an editor does. Sometimes a film becomes something rather different from what was planned, and you only find out what it should be by starting to work on it. People who watch what you've done often seem to discover things you hadn't realized were there, or at least hadn't realized were perceptible. So you sort of discover the film you are working on within the great big pile of raw material you start with.
We filmed with one of the best-known Inuit carvers in Canada, Looty Pijamini, and I had heard that he had been quoted as saying something much like this phrase I remembered hearing. So I asked him about it. Well guess what, he says something rather different. He said that he doesn't start carving without a plan, because then he would waste material. And he does try to imagine the shape within the stone, but mostly so that he can come up with a shape that more or less matches the shape of the stone, because then there will be less work to do to carve the excess away. Totally practical.
I am going to have to stop using that line about documentary editing now. That's too bad, it was my artist's statement, and now I will have to come up with a new one. Perhaps something completely unintelligible.
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