We Are Goldbelt Series

Project Overview

Goldbelt, Inc is an Alaska Native corporation headquarted in Juneau, owned by approximately 3,600 Tlingit shareholders. As with all Alaska Native corporations, Goldbelt’s purpose extends far beyond financial returns — it exists to preserve and uplift the cultural identity of its shareholders.

This project aimed to strengthen Goldbelt’s identity as an organization rooted in Tlingit culture through films that featured traditional events, practices, and artists who are shareholders. When Frostline Studios began working with Goldbelt, the corporation had little to no video content for use in marketing or cultural communications. Their story — one of the most visually and culturally rich in the state — was going untold.

The core collection of these films consisted of an Artist Spotlight series: short documentary portraits of artists such as Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver Lily Hope and traditional carvers Mick and Rick Beasley. The remaining portion of the series focused on capturing traditional events and practices, such as subsistence gathering of herring eggs in southeast Alaska and Juneau’s biennial dance-and-culture festival, Celebration.

The Challenge

Goldbelt faced a challenge that many Alaska Native corporations share: a rich, living culture with a powerful story, but no visual media to communicate it to shareholders, partners, or the broader world.

Goldbelt needed to demonstrate that the business’ success does more than enable it to pay out dividends: it directly supports cultural preservation.

Our Solution

In order to strengthen Goldbelt’s cultural connection with its shareholders, we created a series of films and developed a deep library of video assets that the company could draw upon for years to come.

Frostline Studios was given full creative control on this project, a reflection of the trust Goldbelt placed in our team and the collaborative relationship we built from the start. We developed each film from concept to delivery, coordinating with our subjects to fully understand their story and plan each shoot.

The Central Creative Question

For each Artist Spotlight film, we build the story around a single question: the artist’s why. How did each artist find their medium? Why have they continued to pursue this art? Was there a turning point in their lives that led them to this moment? These questions form the emotional core of documentary storytelling, and they’re what make viewers connect rather than just watch.

Pre-Production

Because most filming required our crew to travel to Juneau and other locations around Southeast Alaska, pre-production was critical to effeciency. Every hour of planning reduced expensive travel time. We invested deeply in getting to know each subject before the cameras even rolled: their story, their craft, the spaces they work in, and the moments worth capturing. 

The depth of trust built in pre-production is what allowed subjects to share not just the facts about their artistic practice, but the full weight of what their work means to them on a personal level. Subjects opened up on camera, sharing meaningful stories that resonate. That kind of openness doesn’t happen in front of a camera crew you just met. It’s the result of preparation, relationship building, and a production approach built on genuine respect for the subject and their story.

Production

We took multiple trips to Juneau and other locations in Southeast Alaska over the course of this project, developing deep collaborative relationships with our client and subjects.

Events such as the herring egg harvest in Sitka, which is reliant on the whims of nature, required both precise logisitical planning and scheduling flexibility to be able to go when the fish arrived.

When filming, our approach is observational and respectful, letting moments unfold naturally rather than staging them. This is the center of Frostline’s documentary style and the reason clients with sensitive cultural subject matter trust us with their stories.

Post-Production

We worked in close collaboration with both Goldbelt and each individual subject through multiple rounds of review, ensuring every film accurately represented the story from the subject’s perspective while meeting Goldbelt’s broader organizational objectives. This iterive, trust-based process is built into every Frostline production.