A Tale of Two Qallunaat – 2024

Coming Soon!

This one hour documentary will use Sheila Burnford’s remarkable non-fiction book: One Woman’s Arctic and hundreds of Susan Ross sketches to connect with elders and youth in Pond Inlet and Iqaluit to capture the stories and opinions they elicit. Passages and stories will be selected and the two women’s correspondence, 16mm film footage, photographs, paintings, and sketches by Susan Ross will be shared with people in both communities. Sheila’s daughter Jonquil Covello and Susan’s son, Tom Ross, who accompanied Susan to the Arctic in 1996, have donated their mothers’ art to the Thunder Bay Museum and are happy to share it in the spirit of reconciliation with the people of Nunavut. The two women first met Robert Flaherty’s Inuit grandchildren in Iqaluit on their first trip in 1970 and we will explore the legacy of his film Nanook of the North and its impact on the two women and the Flaherty family in Nunavut. Inspired by Susan’s uncle, Robert Flaherty and his film Nanook of the North, the two intrepid women left a lasting legacy of their art and love of the north.

A Tale of Qallunaat is a 60 minutes long documentary film about the legacy of two women artists who traveled to Nunavut in the 1970s.
Directed by Kelly Saxberg and Navalik Tologanak