Alethea Arnaquq-Baril has been awarded the Seritor Canadian Cross service for his serious cinematographic work, directing documentaries such as “Angry Inuk” and producing feature films such as “The Grizzlies” that explore the life of Inuit people. As a producer, she has frequently collaborated with her good friend Stacey Aglok Macdonald in dramatic films. But Aglok Macdonald also has experience in comedy, spending years in a comedy of Inuk languages for the aboriginal television network.
Then, when asked how they ended up creating a situation comedy set in a fictitious city of the Arctic, “North By North” (Netflix, April 10), Arnaquq-Baril joked: “It’s Stacey’s fault.”
The duo, together with The producer partner Miranda de Pencier, was hitting the projects in which to collaborate, from feature films to crime dramas, when Aglok Macdonald launched the comedy series about a young woman in a small Arctic trying to solve her life.
The first season of 8 episodes is starring Anna Lambe (“True Detective: Night Country”) as Siaja, who alienates a large part of the community when she publicly leaves her hero’s husband of the hometown; Maika Harper as Neevee, her equally combative and supportive mother; And Mary Lynn Rajskub as head in the Community Center, where Siaja gets a job while trying to start.
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“The Comic Guide to Cultivate Food” (Ten Speed Press)
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“The Comic Guide to Cultivate Food” (Ten Speed Press)
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Arnaquq-Baril was completely aboard the project, but he just wanted to be a producer. “They said I needed to be a writer,” he recalls. “I said:” I am a terrible filmmaker of serious documentaries. There is no way to write comedy. “
But Aglok Macdonald, who knew that his friend was fun in real life, persisted and Arnaquq Baril is grateful. “I fell in love with the writing process, with a world at your fingertips and building something from endless options, playing God and tells people what to say.”
This interview has been edited by length and clarity.
Q. In the series, Siaja explains to her boss that she saves her, the seal leather boots because they did not deal with chemicals and see her daughter hunting, which is an essential part of culture even for children. How crucial were those details?
Arnaquq Baril: It was very important to feel authentic. It is a fictional show, but many stories come from seeds of real life that happened. But it doesn’t matter how extravagant or fictitious it is a story, we because we feel real, that Inuit see and feel seen and feel true. We have seen thousands of documentaries about us, and when we see them, we think: “That is not true. That is not real” or “that is not the only thing about us.”
Q. Was it a challenge to balance all the authentic details with the character and comedy?
AGLOK MACDONALD: It is definitely an act of balance. There have been times when we have written from an internal perspective that we deliver in a scheme and our networks have no idea what we are talking about because there is so much context that needs to know. We want to be on the screen and sometimes it is tempting to put more, but we are not necessarily here to educate. We want the world to be next to us, so we have to withdraw a little and seeds during the season.
Q. Speaking of balance, what about changing between comedy and drama? The character of Siaja and his interactions are frequently fun and cheerful, but his mother has fought with Siaja’s alcoholism and husband illuminates her.
Aglok Macdonald: Sometimes it is a dance. We have written scenes that were too dark and said: “We are going to go back and see where it lands”, but we go back too much and it does not become anything. So we try to find that exactly correct area. We want a show that is cheerful and feels good, but we are not a utopian world, and we want to avoid real things that affect our families and communities, such as trauma or Abui relationships.
Arnaquq-Baril: The program is based on these different characters, and we have a lot of room to touch different things while keeping it personal and fun. We have learned how far we can push it.
Q. This tension is also because Hen and the researcher, Alistair, whose project could bring jobs and wealth, are white. They are good people and Helen is part of the community, but there is a tension there. How do you walk that line?
Arnaquq-Baril: In the Arctic, most communities have a population that is majority inuit, so the whites in charge are in the minority, which is dynamic to which most Americans are not accurate. They are not villains, but we are highlighting that even the best of the whites coming in the Arctic have to deal with the dynamics of the thesis. We ask the question: “How do you walk through a space like this like a white person?”
These are real things, and we know people like this in our communities, but we try to take it to the sweet point where there is comedy from the characters themselves.
Aglok Macdonald: When we were talking to people from the beginning, they said: ‘Helen is a Karen’, but we would say no, no. She is not a Karen, she is a chicken. It is not a simple thing in which it is elegant, bad or racist; She is so intertwined in the community and has an Inuit husband. She is not like people who enter and leave the Arctic; There are so many people who calm down and make this place their home, raising their children of Half Inuites here.
I love Inuit and this community and are trying to make this a better place, but there is some blindness about when it is appropriate to step back and make room for other people to intervene and have voice and some power in the community as well. Then it is complicated and nuanced.
Q. There is a lot of music, from current pop songs to Alanis Morisette in Canada to an Inuk version of “Time later” by Cyndi Lauper. Was that a central idea from the beginning?
Something Kdonald: We knew what we wanted from the beginning. We wrote the opening of episode one with Beyoncé, although Britney ended up being, but we wanted to be firmly rooted in this world and time and space. And just before doing this program, we had dreamed of one day having a cinema or a television program with pop songs translated and sung in Inuk.
Arnaquq-Baril: We wanted modern pop but also vintage things because we really wanted to demonstrate that our community is current, that we existed at this time, but it always connected with the rest of the world, that they or not.
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