sarila - 1st Québec 3d animated film

[lagatta]

The Legend of Sarila (La Légende de Sarila) is the first Québec 3d animated film, set in a very imaginary Arctic culture and landscape, though grounded in Inuit legends and lifeways. Attractive film and very good actors voicing characters in both versions, but also seems filled with many conventions and clichés of children's films also meant to please their parents, down to the cute little animal sidekick - here, a lemming. Those starving teenagers would have eaten it long ago!

[bixaorellana]

Hee hee on the pet snacking, but the trailer did seduce me. Interesting to see that Geneviève Bujold is one of the voices, as is Christopher Plummer (& didn't know he was Canadian). Speaking of voices, I understand that I should appreciate the apparently quite multi-talented Elisapie Isaac, but her singing puts my teeth on edge, plus has that quality so beloved of Disney film songs. Oh well ~~ I can see why she was the logical choice for the musical soundtrack.

LaGatta, are Inuit and other native cultures part of a regular Canadian primary school curriculum?

[Deleted]

I am very pleased that more and more countries are now making animated films, even if it is thanks to the fact that computers and quite a bit of outsourced work to other countries has bought the price down. Naturally, they can also be made so much faster now. It was very hard to get financing for projects that took three or four years to make in the past, unless Disney was behind it.

This is the perfect example of the sort of story that animation can tell well when a live action film on the same subject would have cost a fortune, not to mention the logistics of filming in the Great North.

[lagatta]

Bixa, yes the different Indigenous cultures are definitely on the curriculum in Quebec, much more than was the case decades ago. The languages, not so much, outside the regions where a majority of people speak them.

I don't like that song either, whether in French or in English. Isaac has done less teeth-gritting stuff; I find her better when she sings in Inuktittut, although she is fluent in both French and English as well as her mother tongue. They really had to pick an Indigenous and ideally, Inuit person for the soundtrack, and she is popular - she is a good performer (being very attractive doesn't hurt).

In the French version at least, there are Indigenous actors among those voicing the characters. One is another popular performer: Samian, a young guy of Algonquin origin who raps and sings in his language and in French and who has had his on-screen acting début (positive critique) just recently.

It is funny that the "ideal hunting ground" supposedly to the North of the North pole actually looks like a paridisiacal version of a forest that could have been in southern Quebec before European settlement.

[bixaorellana]

I had also looked her up on youtube. It's just a type of voice that I fail to appreciate. Thanks for the lead to Samian -- he's good!

Great to hear that about the indigenous cultures being on the curriculum in Quebec. I wonder how well the subject is covered in the rest of Canada & in the US.

Re: the location of the hunting ground ~~ last night I watched a tv show purportedly taking place on the Gulf coast of Alabama. Twice a character said that she was going "down to Shreveport". Maybe the Ss and Ns are reversed on various film-makers' compasses?