Polar Bear Safari

Living with Giants

Living with Giants delves into the imaginative world of Paulusie Kasudluak, a young Inuk facing responsibilities as he transitions into adulthood. The film portrays his thoughts, his dreams, and his beliefs, and allows for an intimate immersion into his life. Paulusie is a caring son to his ailing father and a good boyfriend. But what begins as the story of an innocent teenager quickly becomes the struggle of a young man coping with the guilt of having made a huge mistake. Tragically, Paulusie takes the most dramatic decision and takes his own life. Living with Giants remains a poetic journey of resilience that echoes issues that are far greater than Paulusie's personal story.

Wilderness Calling

A young boy from the Dakota prairies grows up heeding the "call of the wilderness." He hunts for pheasant in the Illinois cornfields; ducks and geese in the northern lakes; deer in the Dakota Bad Lands; mountain sheep, goats, caribou, moose, and mountain lions in British Columbia and the Yukon; and brown bears on the Alaskan peninsula. He fishes in British Columbia's mountain streams for grayling and along the Bering Sea coast for trout. The film includes footage of swans, eagles, cnd ptarmigans; a beaver colony repairing a dam; battling rams; and sheep at rest in the mountains.

The Outdoorsman

A group of outdoorsmen demonstrate duck hunting as a preliminary to traveling the various hunting and fishing centers of the world. They begin their journey with a trip to the Rocky Mountains to hunt elk and mountain lions and to fish in the freshwater lakes. They travel to Lac la Ronge in Saskatchewan and to Anchorage and the Katmai Peninsula in Alaska to fish for trout, salmon, and grayling and hunt moose and bear. In the Arctic, the hunters go with a group of Eskimos for their biggest catch, the polar bear. The hunters travel south by plane, to the Fishing Club of Panama to fish for marlin, tuna, shark, and dolphin in the Gulf of Panama. In South Africa and the Zambesi River basin, they often hunt with only a camera. Accompanied by native beaters, they hunt elephants, antelope, buffalo, crocodiles, and hippopotami. As conservationists they capture some almost extinct white rhinoceros and take them to a game preserve for protection.

The Last Wilderness

Archery expert Howard Hill and a cameraman go to Wyoming to film this wild-animal three-reel short. Besides the scenery, the scenes include a buffalo killed by an arrow shot by Hill (for food); a wildcat and a coyote in a battle, and a fight-to-the-death between a mother bear protecting her cubs against a killer male bear.

Greenland

Nanook Revisited

Filmmakers revisit Inukjuak, the Inuit village where Robert J. Flaherty filmed Nanook of the North in the early twentieth century, and examine the realities behind the ground-breaking documentary.

Češi na pólech

Nanook of the North

This pioneering documentary film depicts the lives of the indigenous Inuit people of Canada's northern Quebec region. Although the production contains some fictional elements, it vividly shows how its resourceful subjects survive in such a harsh climate, revealing how they construct their igloo homes and find food by hunting and fishing. The film also captures the beautiful, if unforgiving, frozen landscape of the Great White North, far removed from conventional civilization.

Cree Hunters of Mistassini

An NFB crew filmed a group of three families, Cree hunters from Mistassini. Since times predating agriculture, this First Nations people have gone to the bush of the James Bay and Ungava Bay area to hunt. We see the building of the winter camp, the hunting and the rhythms of Cree family life.

How to Build an Igloo

This classic short film shows how to make an igloo using only snow and a knife. Two Inuit men in Canada’s Far North choose the site, cut and place snow blocks and create an entrance--a shelter completed in one-and-a-half hours. The commentary explains that the interior warmth and the wind outside cement the snow blocks firmly together. As the short winter day darkens, the two builders move their caribou sleeping robes and extra skins indoors, confident of spending a snug night in the midst of the Arctic cold!

The Hunters

An ethnographic documentary following four Ju/’hoansi (!Kung) men during a multi-day giraffe hunt in the Kalahari Desert, filmed during the Smithsonian–Harvard Peabody expedition of 1952–53.

Arctic Tale

Arctic Tale is a 2007 documentary film from the National Geographic Society about the life cycle of a walrus and her calf, and a polar bear and her cubs, in a similar vein to the 2005 hit production March of the Penguins, also from National Geographic.

Le peuple de l'aigle et moi

Eskimos und die Zivilisation

Short film about inuits

The 11th Hour

A look at the state of the global environment including visionary and practical solutions for restoring the planet's ecosystems. Featuring ongoing dialogues of experts from all over the world, including former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, renowned scientist Stephen Hawking, former head of the CIA R. James Woolse

Labrador North

This short documentary looks at the government relocation of the Labrador Inuit and the effects on their culture and social structures.

Nuestros safaris

Argentinian short film which shows local fauna and hunting.

Pictures Out Of My Life

The drawings and recollections of Inuit artist Pitseolak, from the book of the same title written by Dorothy Eber. Now in her seventies, Pitseolak is one of the most famous of the graphic artists of the Cape Dorset (Baffin Island) artists' colony and co-operative. Her coloured pencil and felt-pen drawings vividly illustrate her memories of past life in the Arctic, and of the birds, animals and spirits that figured so large in the daily life of the Inuit.

Between Two Worlds

This feature film is a documentary portrait of Joseph Idlout, a man who was once the world's most famous Inuit. Unknown to most Canadians today, Idlout was the subject of many films and books, and one of the Inuit hunters pictured for many years on the back of Canada's $2 bill. In this film Idlout's son, Peter Paniloo, takes us on a journey through his father's life - that of a man caught "between two worlds."

Qipisa

The director goes back to her roots in Pangnirtung, amongst her family and community. It leads her to another journey: to Qipisa, the outpost camp from where they were uprooted.