INUIT ACTORS SOUGHT FOR FULL-LENGTH "SIKUMI"

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Posted: October 23, 2009 - 8:45 am

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By MIKE DUNHAM
Barrow: Award-winning director Andrew MacLean plans to film his full-length feature in his home town.
Andrew MacLean, whose short film “Sikumi” (“On the Ice”) has won awards at the Sundance Film Festival and elsewhere, will hold auditions in Anchorage starting today for an expanded version of the movie. Prior acting experience is not needed.

Producer Cara Marcous said that the upcoming movie will be MacLean’s first full-length feature film. It takes the premise of the short film — a murder and the conflict faced by a witness to reveal what he knows — and transplants it to modern times, with the action set in contemporary Barrow.

The lead characters, two adult men in the short version, will become teenagers in the new movie. And where the first “Sikumi” featured all-Inupiaq dialogue, the full-length rewrite will use English, “Because almost everyone in Barrow today speaks English,” she said.

So being “comfortable acting in English” is a requirement. Also, Marcous added, “all the character are Inupiaq so we’re only casting for Inuit people,” ages 16-70.

MacLean and Marcous recently completed auditions in Canada and are now holding try-outs in Alaska. After the Anchorage sessions, open auditions will follow in Nome, Shishmaref, Kotzebue, Point Hope, Fairbanks and Barrow this month and next.

The Anchorage schedule as follows.
• Today, 12-4 p.m., Cyrano’s Playhouse, 413 D St.
• Saturday, 12-4 p.m., Cyrano’s.
• Sunday, 10 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., Cyrano’s.
• Monday, 12-3 p.m., International Gallery of Contemporary Art, 427 D St.

People wanting to audition should attempt to get to today’s first round, Marcous said.

More information, including instructions on how to audition by video, is available at www.ontheicethemovie.com.

Check out other creative opportunities listed below.

Find Mike Dunham online at adn.com/contact/mdunham or call 257-4332.

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