Of Whales, the Moon and Men

In 1962, legendary Quebec directors Pierre Perrault and Michel Brault took their cameras to Île-aux-Coudres, an island in the St. Lawrence, where for centuries fishermen had caught belugas with a unique technique: the men sank a trap of saplings into offshore mud at low tide to capture the white whale. This tradition was abandoned in 1920, but the NFB filmmakers persuaded some oldtimers to revive the practice. This is the unrehearsed story of what happened. In black and white.