ITELMEN STORIES
Estonia, 2010, 68 min
Liivo Niglas
28.01.2012 13:15
The action in the film revolves around an ancestrally used practice of hunting sable by net. Set in rural Kamchatka in the Russian Far East, where fewer than 20 speakers of Itelmen remain, the film goes beyond its original aim to recapture a language and a hunting practice that are remembered but no longer in use. Two hunters encounter the wild environs and villages of Kamchatka as a history laden homeland and memories, nostalgia, resignation and hope echo throughout the film.
Liivo Niglas, born in Estonia in 1970 is currently a lecture of ethnology at University of Tartu, Estonia. He also runs an independent production company, Mp Doc, for anthropological documentary films. He has made films in Siberia, Africa, Central Asia and North America. Some of his work are “The Brigade” (2000), “Yuri Vellas´s World” (2003), “Adventure High” (2004), “Making Rain” (2007).
Director and production: Liivo Niglas
Language of dialogues: Russian, Itelmen
Language of subtitles: English
Lauching of film and award (selection):
International Festival of Ethnological Film, Belgrade, Serbia, 2011. Grand Prix.
Sardinia International Ethnographic Film Festival, Nuoro, Italy, 2010
Festival of Visual Anthropology ASPEKTY, Torun, Poland, 2010
Parnu International Documentary and Anthropology Film Festival, Parnu, Estonia, 2011
This film narrates the meeting with Sara Marielle Gaup and Lawra Somby, two young performers of joik (Sami chanting technique), born in the north and the south of Sápmi (the cultural nationhood of Sami people in North Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia). They have come together through a creative musical project called “Adjágas” which in Sami means “the state between sleep and awakening”. In this peculiar state one can unveil reality and tune into the most profound and original joiks. Adjágas, in this way bring the musical-lyrical practice of joik toward the international musical scene by performing with musicians of different horizons, and adapting its performances to the context of reception. The protagonists express different ways of life and concerns, relating also to what it means to be young artists with an indigenous background, having to work a way into the musical industry. It is also a film about what in the waves of the past is worth struggling for understanding, and how joik brings together everyday life, politics and spirituality and becomes a language healing the pain from the colonial history of the past.
The square formerly known as Moszkva tér (Moscow Square) in Budapest is the setting for this short film. Through the documentation of people’s voices and activities, this film underlines how the city’s busiest transport hub is also a space that Budapest’s most profoundly marginalised groups rely on for their livelihood and survival.
