A National Film Board of Canada production

With each stroke of his blade, acclaimed Inuk carver Billy Gauthier instills his art with his passion for his home, Labrador. His carvings are sought after across the globe for their flowing intricate details and profound messages rooted in Inuit culture and connections to the natural world. Billy Gauthier: Carving the Future is an intimate look at the master sculptor’s meticulous process and the inspiration behind one of the most ambitious creations of his career: the carving of a monumental whale skull. 

In Billy Gauthier: Carving the Future, the acclaimed Inuk carver shares a vital message with the world through the most ambitious sculpture of his career. 

Can you tell us about this film and why you wanted to share Billy’s story? 

I’ve known Billy since we were young; we are both from the same town. We have been following each other’s careers right from the start. He’s become such a successful artist, and I’ve always been so proud of him. When he asked me if I wanted to make a film about his work and his message, I felt so honoured. I made this film to show the world Billy’s process, to capture his connection to Labrador and the Land, and so that people could hear his message directly from him. My father and grandfathers were all hunters and trappers, and that is such an important part of Labrador culture. Billy really works to keep that part of our culture alive. So as someone from Labrador, I really see the importance of what Billy is doing—not just his carving, but the way he lives his life, and I know lots of other people in Labrador will see that, too. For people outside of Labrador, this film is a chance to see something they’ve never seen before. A lot of people know Billy’s carvings. They see them in galleries or hear about his activism on the news, but they don’t know him as a person, they don’t know where he comes from. For them, this is a chance to learn about a new side of him.  

For the people that don’t know about Billy’s artwork or his message, what will they see in this film? 

His work is so beautiful, and for me what makes his carvings so spectacular are the fine details that really tell the story. When he carves a face, there’s so much emotion and strength, it’s like the sculpture has its own feelings. His carvings share a lot about Inuit culture. You can see the tools that people [in the sculpture] are using to hunt or fish. He uses natural materials like stone, bone or caribou antlers, which are already beautiful, and bring out even more beauty. Even the water! He can make stone look like it’s flowing like water! A lot of his carvings are about the beauty of nature and how we have to protect it. You can see in the film that he is inspired by his experiences on the Land in Labrador. He’ll take things that have happened to him and carve that story into his work.  

In the film, we see Billy carve his biggest sculpture ever, Silatsualimâk Anânavut: The Earth, Our Mother. Can you tell us about what that was like? 

Billy carved this fin-whale skull that was bigger than the two of us combined, as part of the Bonavista Biennale in Bonavista, Newfoundland and Labrador. He had to carve this skull over seven days, and normally, like he says in the film, he likes to take his time and make sure everything is perfect. So this was definitely a challenge. Before he got there, Billy had only seen a picture of the whale skull, but he couldn’t really see that much of it because it was covered in snow. It was kept on the lawn of a museum in the Trinity Bay area of Newfoundland for many years after washing ashore somewhere. In the beginning of the film, we show his reaction to seeing the skull for the first time. We were both very surprised at first; we didn’t expect it to be this huge. A lot of the skull was worn away from sitting on the lawn of the museum, and it was just really old. When we first saw it, it was upside down, hiding the only area that Billy could carve. So once it was flipped right side up, Billy got a chance to sit there and look at it. Before then, he didn’t even know how thick or dense the material he was going to work with would be. So over the next few days, we filmed him carving all day, sometimes right into the night. Just watching the process of how he does it was so amazing. Watching him, you can appreciate just how much skill it takes to create something like this. It’s impressive just seeing all the different tools he uses for different purposes. Sometimes he’d just be sitting there staring at the piece, thinking about what to do next and planning it all out. Even that was cool to watch. 

How does this carving reflect the themes we see in the film? 

As Billy is working on this big whale skull, he’s carving all these things on it, like the water, a beautiful Inuk face, the mountains, the sun and moon, and a seal. These are all things from his life that inspire him. We spent 10 hours filming him on the ice, hunting a seal. We see him on the Land, we see him hunt, we see him practise his culture. And all that is reflected in this carving. Billy says he uses beauty in his work to get people’s attention and show them that this is something special and needs to be protected. 

Your first short documentary with the NFB, Nalujuk Night, was mainly filmed in one night. But this film was made over a period of years. What was it like making a short film over such a long timespan?   

Well, Billy and I are very similar; it doesn’t matter how long it takes to do one project. What matters is that it’s just right and exactly what we want to put out into the world. Billy carved the whale skull during the summer, and we knew we wanted to film him on the ice seal hunting, so we had to wait until hunting season in the spring. But we’d also had to wait for the skull to be transported to the Rooms provincial gallery in St. John’s, where Billy did the carving. And once it had gotten there, it had been put into isolation to be sterilized because it had been sitting on the museum’s lawn for years and had bugs and stuff in it. When it was finally displayed, we brought in Billy’s daughter to see it for the first time. It was really emotional because Billy said he carved this piece for her. He said that he wants her, and future generations, to be able to enjoy the Land and hunting and fishing, the way that he does. And that’s the message of the carving: to protect the land and culture for future generations. So we were able to film the two of them together when she saw it for the very first time. And there’s a scene where you can just see all the emotion in her face. It was a very special moment. That was our last shoot, and I knew that we had everything we needed to do the story exactly how it needed to be done; to tell Billy’s story and share his message.