The Iñupiat are an Indigenous people native to northern Alaska who, for centuries, have lived mostly in seaside villages north of the Arctic Circle. With many of their villages inaccessible by roads, most Iñupiat continue to subsist by hunting and harvesting local animals and plants. And, as the film Anaiyyun: Prayer for the Whale illustrates, no creature is so central to the community’s subsistence, as well as its cultural and spiritual life, as the whale, which can often feed an entire village. With gorgeously framed imagery from Kiliii Yüyan, a Nanai/Hèzhé (East Asian Indigenous) and Chinese American photographer and filmmaker who specialises in documenting the lives of Indigenous peoples across the globe, the film shows the scenes surrounding the capture of a bowhead whale in the Iñupiat village of Utqiaġvik. More than just a hunt, the act is a spiritual practice, imbued with rituals and prayers that have bound Iñupiat communities for generations.
Director: Kiliii Yüyan
video
Archaeology
What’s an ancient Greek brick doing in a Sumerian city? An archeological investigation
16 minutes
video
Family life
The migrants missing in Mexico, and the mothers who won’t stop searching for them
21 minutes
video
Ecology and environmental sciences
The tree frog die-off that sparked a global mystery – and revealed a dark truth
15 minutes
video
Beauty and aesthetics
In art, the sublime is a feedback loop, evolving with whatever’s next to threaten us
9 minutes
video
History
From Afghanistan to Virginia – the Muslims who fought in the American Civil War
22 minutes
video
Family life
One family’s harrowing escape from postwar Vietnam, told in a poignant metaphor
10 minutes
video
Fairness and equality
Visit the small Texas community that lives in the shadow of SpaceX launches
14 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
Our world has very different contours when a millimetre is blown up to a full screen
8 minutes
video
War and peace
A frontline soldier’s moving account of the fabled ‘Christmas truce’ of 1914
12 minutes