Video short animation "Shaman" By Luc Perez

Watch "Shaman"11 minute animated acrylic on paper with computer compositing. In order to survive harsh nature, Utaaq as a young Inuit hunter must become a summoner of spirits, a Shaman. The story starts with Utaaq, now an Inuit elder, waiting at an urban bus stop in downtown Copenhagen, the capital city of Denmark. When Utaaq spots a bird from his native Greenland flying above his head, this rare visitor to those climates reminds Utaaq of his youth. In memory flashbacks, old Utaaq's journey from young hunter to Shaman is told.

As a young hunter he discovers that a mountain wanderer is using a Tupilak for killing local hunters. Tupilaks are magical creatures that must obey their masters. In order to prevent further death and destruction, and to restore the balance with nature in his community, Utaaq goes into the mountains to learn, to be, a Shaman. When Utaaq returns to his community, he uses his powers to destroy the mountain wanderer. After the flashback of memories ends, the story returns us to the bus stop where old Utaqq is still, waiting, nostalgically weary, watching the bird. The familiar Arctic bird, forced to fly farther south for survival due to human tampering with the Arctic, reminds Utaaq of his heart-connection to the wilderness of his native northern home ... before he too was forced to fly south leaving the land for an urban life in the city.

Pour survivre dans une nature hostile, Utaaq, jeune chasseur inuit, devra devenir un invocateur d’esprits, un shaman. Shaman veut rendre hommage à ce peuple fascinant dont la culture traditionnelle s'est considérablement dégradée depuis les 100 dernières années. Shaman est une tentative de mettre en image un aspect de la culture Inuit : le chamanisme. Je voulais aire ressentir au public la force de la vie spirituelle inuit et de la restituer dans ce monde extreme qu’est la nature majestueuse du Groenland. Il était important de décrire les différentes étapes qui font d’un homme un invocateur d’esprit. J’ai voulu situé le film dans un passé tres proche pour renforcé le contraste avec notre monde matérialiste. Shaman est un conte et un hommage à cette magie que nous avons peut-etre perdue à jamais.

Director's statement and website: "Shaman wants to pay tribute to this fascinating people whose traditional culture has deteriorated considerably over the past 100 years. Shaman is an attempt to imagine an aspect of Inuit shamanistic culture. I wanted the audience to feel the strength of Inuit spiritual life, and restore to this extreme world what the majesty of Greenland's nature feels like. It was important to describe the various steps that makes a man into a conjurer of mind. I wanted to set the film in a very recent past for enhanced contrast with our materialistic world. Shaman is a story and a tribute to the magic that we may have lost forever."

Video "Making of"

“The film is a visual experience! It’s a non verbal film painted with a big brush and dissolving images of landscapes and the sea in Greenland. Shaman is a playful tale of the magic forces of nature in Inuit culture where people and animals are transformed and joined together. Every picture is a painting – the picture sequenses have continuous metamorforsis, dramatic shifts accompanied by a very interesting soundtrack.”
— Special Mention Award, Odense.

Image Credits