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. Admission is free and open to the public.

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.