Director: Andrew Walton
Producer: Dallas Brennan Rexer and Katy Chevigny
Co-Producer: Elizabeth Mandel
Director of Photography: Jeff Stonehouse

Imagine explaining the Internet superhighway to your grandmother when she has never seen a stoplight. Arctic Waltz takes viewers to a remote community that in many ways has been frozen in time until relatively recently. Situated in the Yukon—80 miles above the Arctic Circle and hundreds of miles from the nearest town—Old Crow (population 200) is reachable only by small propeller plane or rugged canoe. In the minds of more southern citizens, this is a place defined by the mythic romance of windswept tundras, icy igloos, harmonious potlatches and perhaps even jolly old Santa Claus. However, Old Crow is someplace much more complex. With the recent addition of a community satellite dish, Internet connections and a commuter plane, the residents’ rich traditional lifestyle is coming directly into contact with a 21st century idea of day-to-day life.

Out of necessity and a commitment to honor their past, the older generation has maintained a traditional, subsistence lifestyle—most still speak Gwich’in, tend huskies, hunt Caribou and preserve the meat for the long winters. Meanwhile, government subsidies and grants have enabled the construction of a thoroughly modern elementary school in Old Crow, complete with G4 Mac computers for each student. High school students are sent to boarding schools in Whitehorse, the Yukon’s more urban capital. Consequently, today’s younger generation now knows as much about the latest trends and products as kids who have grown up in the cities and suburbs.

Will Old Crow succumb to the wave of globalization? Will it disappear as the younger generation is drawn to more urban places on the globe? Or will it continue as it has for generations—a living diorama of life from another time? And what can those of us caught up in modern living learn from meeting the characters and the news of this otherwise forgotten enclave?

For more information, please contact Dallas Brennan Rexer
(dallas@bigmouthproductions.com).

Funded by: the Lucius & Eva Eastman Fund, the Unity Avenue Foundation. the San Francisco Foundation, the Battle Creek Foundation, the Community Futures Collective/MG-LEF, the Low Dot Chew and Lee Shee Fund, the Wellspring Foundation , the Experimental Television Center's Finishing Funds program, supported by the Electronic Media and Film Program at the New York State Council on the Arts and several generous private donors.

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