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
Production: Centrum of apply anthropology and research, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen
After the end of the Cold War, a lot of army bases in the East Europe became abandoned. Soldiers and their families have left, roaring of fighters has died away, univited guests stopped comming to public places. How do inhabitants of the formerly adjacent villages feel about the stay of Russian soldiers twenty years later?
