Since my daughter was born 11 months ago, I have only gone to a movie theater one time until this last weekend, when I watched "On the Ice." My wife Kiana kept telling me our daughter would get restless and disturb the other guest watching the film. I must say she was right, and I was able to watch two- thirds of the movie and had to listen to the rest from the hallway so my daughter could talk and play. The film was excellent to watch and was well worth making the effort with my energetic 11-month-old.
The movie based is on the isolated community of Barrow, Alaska. It is a full-length feature film shot entirely in Barrow written and directed by Inupiaq Eskimo filmmaker Andrew McLean. The film's entire cast is Inupiaq Eskimos from Alaska.
The movie was an outgrowth of a short film produced by McLean. To get the movie produced, the backing of 840 people who donated through a program called Kick Start and raised the first several thousand dollars was critical. Other major investors came to the table and were able to use the Alaska State Film credit, a program that maybe renewed this year by our state legislature.
The film's main stars are Josiah Patkotak of Barrow and Frank Ireland of Nome, who in the movie play best friends that grew up like brothers. In real life, the two met before the film shooting in Barrow and McLean had them spend the day playing Xbox games to get to know each other better. They have since become close friends off screen.
Their father in the movie and another main character is Teddy Smith of Kiana, Alaska. Smith wanted to audition for the movie but wasn't able to go to one of the locations where auditions were taking place and the producers couldn't fly him in from Kiana. So, Smith had his 10-year-old niece film him and they uploaded the video to YouTube where McLean could review it. McLean liked what he saw and Smith was off to Barrow to be in the movie.
There were many others in the film including Sierra Sampson from Kiana, Rosabelle Rexford of Barrow, John Miller of Barrow and Adamia Kerr of Montreal, Quebec.
I must say it was great to get a real sense of Alaska on the big screen. It was great to see people I have known for many years acting in the movie. It was great to see Alaska Natives as movie stars. Overall, it was great to see this movie in a theater on the big screen and I hope that we see more films like this in Alaska featuring our Alaska Native people and more regions of our state.
Jason Evans is the publisher of The Arctic Sounder