The 2017 Skábmagovat Film Festival spotlights the Maori

The Skábmagovat Film Festival will spotlight Maori films from Aotearoa (New Zealand) this January, with the Maori singer and filmmaker Moana Maniapoto attending. Maniapoto, who has been elected to the Music Hall of Fame in her native country, will perform at the Cultural Centre Sajos on Saturday, 28 January 2017.

Right now, we see Maori cinema flourish. The most recent example of this vigorous period is the fact that Taika Waititi has been granted Hollywood funding for his films as the second Maori, with Lee Tamahori as the first one (Once Were Warriors). In addition to a diverse cavalcade of Maori films, Skábmagovat presents a selection of Waititi’s films, including two films (Boy and Hunt for the Wilderpeople) that have drawn all-time record audiences in New Zealand.

The Sámi celebrate

A Sámi jubilee year gives a special flavour to the programme of the festival. In February, the Sámi celebrate the centenary of their national day, and 2017 brings us the 30th anniversary of Sámi cinema.

A world premiere of a documentary on Elsa Laula Renberg gives the audience a taste of the national day. Renberg, a South Sámi activist and politician, was a central figure in creating a pan-Sámi sense of unity in the early 1900s. The film has been directed by Roger Manndal.

The anniversary of Sámi cinema, in turn, is celebrated through a joint show with the Maori where two indigenous films that have been nominated for an Academy Award meet: Nils Gaup’s dynamic Pathfinder (1987) and Taika Waititi’s charming short film Two Cars, One Night (2004).

Katja Gauriloff's successful documentary Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest will be enriched by memories by contemporaries of Robert Crottet, the author whose visit to the Skolt Sámi community the film focuses on. As Treasures from the Archives, we will show Skolt Sámi documentaries by Jarmo Laine, selected from the Yleisradio materials that the documentarist’s heirs donated to the Sámi Archives in autumn 2016.

For the first time, Skábmagovat will have an evening of dance at the snow theatre. The performance Jotteeh has been created by Auri Ahola, an Inari Sámi dancer who danced at the Finnish National Ballet and in the Tero Saarinen Company for years and moved to Inari in 2015.

The 19th Skábmagovat Film Festival takes place in Inari from 26 to 29 January 2017.

Films will be screened at the Sámi Cultural Centre Sajos, the Sámi Museum and Northern Lapland Nature Centre Siida, and the Northern Lights Theatre, our special theatre made from snow. A more detailed programme will be published in December at www.skabmagovat.fi.

The festival is part of the programme of Finland’s centenary year.

Further information:

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

Anne Kirste Aikio, Festival Director, tel. +358 40 7681 689

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

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

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