Stories from Our Land 1.5: Inngiruti - The Thing that Sings!
2011 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Nyla Innuksuk
Genres: documentary, family, musical
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
In Pangnirtung, elders recall community dances from 50 years earlier as master accordion player Simeonie Keenainak performs for friends, family and neighbours in a celebration of music and dance.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
This looks like the kind of earnest community documentation that wins festival goodwill, which is exactly why I'd probably skip it — though I admit Innuksuk mining 50-year-old memory and live accordion as a time machine is at least trying to do something conceptually weirder than the surface suggests.
Innuksuk positions itself within the NFB's longstanding commitment to Indigenous voices and archival memory-work, and the formal decision to let Keenainak's accordion anchor the temporal collapse between past and present reveals a filmmaker thinking carefully about how sound and gathering create historical presence.
The entire weight of this film hinges on Keenainak's hands and face during performance — that single choice to let an elder's embodied musicianship become the bridge between recollection and lived moment is what elevates a five-minute community portrait into something that actually *feels* like time folding.