Skábmagovat Dives into Latin America

The programme of the 17^th film festival in Inari has been published at www.skabmagovat.fi.

In January, the indigenous film festival Skábmagovat will turn its spotlight on the production of the indigenous nations of Latin America. The festival – 17^th in number – will be held in Inari 22–26 January 2015.

As its special guest, the festival will have the Mapuche director Jeannette Paillán from Chile. Paillán is a founding member of CLACPI, an organisation that coordinates indigenous films. She is also the head of the biggest indigenous film festival in South America. Last January, she was granted the highly valued Bartolomé de las Casas prize from Spain for the work she has done for the indigenous nations of America.

This winter, the theme programme of Skábmagovat offers visual images from Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Brazil, etc. The themes range from the everyday lives of Quechuan villages in Peru to the fight of Ecuadorian Kichwa for their lands.

Skábmagovat also offers the audience a wide armchair trip from New Zealand to the Inuit regions of Canada and from the Yakutian wilds of Russia to the fells of the Land of the Sámi. Stories are told in more than 20 languages.

The programme includes two fine sets of short films: one produced by the Film Lab of the International Sámi Film Centre ISF in Norway, and one that consists of films created in the youth workshops of Wapikoni Mobile, a touring studio that has operated in Quebec, Canada, already for 10 years.

The longer documentaries deal with bitter themes. What Measures to Save a People? by Maja Hagerman looks at the hard circumstances of the Sámi in the grim racial studies made in Sweden, while the touching My Legacy, a very personal film by the Tsilhqot’in director Helen Haig-Brown, dives into the painful legacy of Canadian residential schools.

Harry Johansen’s documentary Colours and Life shows a Sámi man’s will to rise from the depths of alcoholism and become an artist. Når speilbildet lyver (With the Mirror Image Lying) by Niels Ovllá Dunfjell deals with the issue of gender change in the Sámi community.

An exceptionally interesting film is the creative drama A White Day by the Yakutian director Michail Lukachevskyi on a group of people whose car breaks down in the middle of the Siberian glacier.

The Skábmagovat Film Festival is arranged by the Friends of Sámi Art in cooperation with the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida, the Indigenous Peoples’ Film Centre Skábma, the Sámi Education Institute and YLE Sápmi.

The Financers are the Sámi Parliament, the Sámi Council, Art Promotion Centre of Lapland, the municipality of Inari, Ministry of Education and Culture, Finnish Cultural Foundation, The Lapland Regional Fund, AVEK - The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture, Arts Promotion Centre Finland

The festival has Jenni Haukio, the First Lady of Finland, as its protector.

Further information:

Jorma Lehtola, Artistic Director, tel. +358 50 4144 349

Sunna Nousuniemi, Festival Producer, tel. +358 40 9666 318