Knud

Using an effective combination of original actuality, archive photography and evocative sketches, this short documentary follows the expeditions of Knud Rasmussen as he explored the colossal island of Greenland. Using dogs and sledges, and a small team of his own as well as the local Inuit (though he refers to them as Eskimo) he braves the beauty and bleakness of this snow-covered land as they head north and then across the interior. Unsurprisingly, there isn’t a great deal of moving imagery here, but an animated map gives us some idea as to the scale of their efforts and with glacier slices crashing into the sea and the locals kayaking in the lively waters, we are left with a clear sense of the unaltered nature of the place in the early 20th century, The story is related based on first hand accounts and his diaries, and provides us with an indication of just how gruelling their travails were as he tried to study a little of the people and what made them tick, and that tragedy was never far from their sleds. It’s maybe a little over-scored, and that faux-drama does sometimes get in the way of what we can see or imagine, but the faces of the indigenous population eking out their existence as they have for generations; living in igloos and feeding/clothing/heating from the produce of sea all conveys a hard life that this documentary allows to speak for itself.