Janson Media today announced the release of Great North to television markets worldwide. This Giant Screen Film, now available in HDTV, takes viewers on a whirling journey of rich landscapes and rugged terrain, and introduces the peoples who have long lived in harmony with the harsh elements of the Arctic.
We often think of life in the Great North as a daily, harsh struggle for survival. It does take special gifts to live and prosper in the world’s most inhospitable zone, but it is also a place of poetry and magic, music and myth-making. People have been living in the far North for millennia, and they have developed fascinating and unique ways of thriving in their environment.
With an Inuit guide, Great North follows the herds of caribou through the Canadian North as they make their annual trek of more than 7,000 kilometres, which gives them the title of greatest migrating land mammal on Earth. The white deserts of the winter, the brief and colorful summer buzzing with flies — the herds face all these conditions and more, as their migration opens a window on the Northern landscape for us. In the Arctic reaches of Sweden, the Saami people learned to tame the reindeer even before other cultures elsewhere on our planet learned to domesticate the horse. The Saami are the cowboys of the North, and we’re invited to the autumn round-up to join them as they care for their herds of reindeer.
Great North won the Jury Award at the 2001 Long Beach International Film Festival. The 42-minute film is now available exclusively from Janson Media for worldwide television licensing.