The Harvard Film Archive is proud to honor filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk with the first Sun Hill Award for Excellence in Native American Filmmaking. Zacharias Kunuk’s feature film The Fast Runner (Atanarjuat) garnered the prestigious Cannes Camera d’Or for best first film, six Canadian Genie Awards (including Best Picture), and went on to receive international acclaim after its release in 2001. The first feature in the Inuktitut language, directed by an Inuit, The Fast Runner brought to life a one thousand year old legend of clan warfare and romantic conflict, which the Village Voice hailed as heralding “a rebirth of cinema.”

Zacharias Kunuk grew up in Igloolik, an Inuit town of some 1200 people in Northern Canada. In order to see his favorite films every week as a boy—for twenty-five cents at the local theater—he began carving and selling walrus tusks. Eventually he graduated to selling his artwork in the galleries of Montreal and with the proceeds purchased his first video camera. Frustrated by the way he saw Inuit culture portrayed in Canadian media, he created Igloolik Isuma Productions in the mid-1980s and began producing documentaries and dramas on Inuit history, culture, and ritual.

The Sun Hill Award for Excellence in Native American Filmmaking is an annual award to honor an individual who has made a significant contribution as a director, actor, or producer to the legacy of Native American film. The Harvard Film Archive would like to thank Jennifer Malloy Combs for her invaluable support.