At the age of 20, Max left his native Marseille for Greenland. He is now in his
sixties and has spent his life in the village of Tiniteqilaaq.
At the beginning, life is tough, and not only due to the coldness of the weather:
the beauty of the landscapes, the humanity of the people, are only equal to
the harshness of the living conditions. Outside the village, it is a wild, hostile
world, where the usual Western behaviors are not only inappropriate, but
potentially a deadly threat. Max also sees the gradual absorption of Inuit culture
into Western ways of life imported from Denmark. The traditional dog
sled is increasingly abandoned in favor of the snowmobile. Throughout his life
there, Max will adapt to the Inuit way of life, learning the trade of traditional
hunter, marrying an Inuit woman, and raising two children, then becoming a
representative of the order and a schoolteacher. He tries to give back some of
what he has learned by having his students build a traditional kayak using a
method of manufacture which is now only known to a few elders…
Behind the portrait that Simon Hureau paints of Max and his story, there is
a parallel one of a way of life that is disappearing, confronted by both the
pressure of modernity and the difficulties inherent to life in Greenland. After
the springtime atmosphere of L’Oasis, Simon Hureau gives us all the nuances
of the ice in this biography with a touch of adventure that benefits from his
magnificent watercolors.