The Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum is Hosting an Arctic Festival, April 11-13, 2024!
This April the Arctic Museum is hosting a film festival celebrating the recovery of forgotten archival films documenting the Arctic, the discovery of people who contributed to the films but whose efforts were uncredited, and the ways Inuit filmmakers are using historic, visual documents in their contemporary films.
Events will start off on April 11 at 7 PM with a presentation by award-winning author and researcher Mindy Johnson, who will talk about her rediscovery of Bessie Mae Kelley, the first female animator in the United States. Kelley grew up in Caribou, Maine. In 1917, during the early days of animation, she began her remarkable career. Her work includes early animated films such as Gasoline Alley and Flower Fairies, as well as animated maps and titles for Arctic explorer Donald B. MacMillan’s films.
On Friday, April 12 at 7 PM we will focus on contemporary Inuit filmmakers using archival footage in their work. Mark Turner, an historian and media archivist, Willi Lempert, an anthropologist working with Indigenous filmmakers, will lead the dialogue as we screen two short films: Holly Andersen’s Hebron Relocation, and Asinnajaq’s Three Thousand. Each film takes a different approach to using historic footage of the Arctic, and we look forward to an interesting discussion of the ways Indigenous filmmakers are repurposing historic film footage in their own works.
On Saturday, April 13 we will peer into archives, with an all-day symposium. Presentations will begin with film historian and archivist Audrey Kupferberg, who will talk about her decades of work with the Arctic Museum’s film collections. Attention will then turn to women involved in early Arctic films as Mindy Johnson talks about Bessie Mae Kelley’s work on Donald MacMillan’s films and film archivist Audrey Amidon (Bowdoin Class of 2003) introduces the films of Louise Boyd, who led expeditions to the Arctic in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.
In the afternoon Nunatsivut (Labrador) will be the focus. Arctic Museum director Susan Kaplan will talk about MacMillan’s lecture film Under the Northern Lights, which features his work in Labrador, and Mark Turner will discuss his efforts to make archival media available in northern communities. We will end with Genevieve LeMoine, the Arctic Museum’s curator, discussing the films taken on Donald MacMillan’s Crocker Land Expedition (1913-1917), some of the earliest surviving footage from Greenland.
All the presentations will be accompanied by fascinating and rarely seen archival footage, and there will be ample time between presentations for questions and discussion.
For a full schedule go to the Arctic Museum’s website.