DEFINITION X THE FLINT
The Flint: It sounds like you were starting from scratch. How has it grown since? ALU: In 2011, just two years after we established, we did an indigenous film conference. It was held in a northern Norway Sami village called Kautokeino on the Norwegian side of Sami land. We have lots of Sami institutions there, including our institute, like the university and national theatre. We invited people from the film business worldwide — Sundance, Berlin, all the film festivals and Nordic institutes. That kick-started our international network and collaboration, which has been vital going forward. In 2014, we did our biggest production at the time, although we still didn’t have very much money; maybe €300,000- 400,000. Then, in 2016, we got the first Sami feature film by the new generation. That was Amanda Kernell’s Sami Blood , which was a big hit at international festivals, winning about 20 awards. Since then, we’ve focused a lot on taking our filmmakers from short films and documentaries into bigger productions. Now we’re at a crossroads, with many of these filmmakers directing or producing feature films or series. Last year we had three feature film premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF); one a documentary feature. This year we had two and next year there will be two to four. That’s a lot for us – we still don't have hundreds of millions in funding, but we do have more than when we started. We get about €3 million annually, which isn’t much in film but we can do a lot with it. The Flint: That’s some impressive growth. Where does your funding come from now? ALU: It’s basically government funding from Norway, the Ministry of Culture and the Sami Parliament. About 30% on top of that is project funding, which we apply for from various sources, such as international partners. We have a great
DISTRIBUTING KNOWLEDGE The Institute recently ran a producers’ workshop with Netflix and European Audiovisual Entrepreneurs (EAVE) to foster talent in Sami filmmaking
The Flint: Can you tell us more about that Netflix collaboration? ALU: There’s a production called Stolen that’s now on Netflix, as of last spring. We got a Sami director for that project, as well as many Sami crew members. It’s a story from the reindeer herding area on the Swedish side of Sami land, and it was a big success on Netflix, with about 20 million views in the first weeks. We are continuing our dialogue with the streaming service, and hopefully we can talk about other productions as well, but we don’t know yet. Even though we don’t produce a large number of films each year, the ones we do are well received. They travel a lot, which is very encouraging. For instance, there’s Egil Pedersen’s new film, Biru Unjárga ( My Fathers’ Daughter ). Egil was also one of our 7 Sami Stories directors in 2014. He’s been writing and fighting to get funding all these years. Eventually he got a grant from the Norwegian Film Institute, which made it possible to produce the film. Now it has premiered at TIFF and is one of two films from Norway shortlisted for the European Film Awards. The Flint: I’m curious about the content of Sami films. How do they reflect the culture, and link to nature and the environment? ALU: Indigenous films and storytellers somehow always include a connection to nature, knowledge about nature, and our traditions. Even if it’s not a film explicitly about climate change and its consequences, that world view of being part of nature – and that it’s alive and
collaboration with Netflix now; supporting our capacity-building initiatives. We’re also seeing growing interest, especially internationally. In recent years, there’s been a boom in festivals focusing on diversity, inclusion, representation and indigenous stories in general. One concrete network that we’ve been part of since 2014 has recently been rebranded as the Indigenous Cinema Alliance. It’s made up of six partners and is supported by the Canada Media Fund. We’ve been at the European Film Market every year since 2015, where we’re at the native stand promoting each of our filmmakers and films. The ISFI also established the Arctic Indigenous Film Fund in 2018. The foundation of everything we do is to preserve our language, culture and identity, to tell our own stories and have narrative self-determination. There has been a long history of assimilation and colonisation in the Nordic countries, trying to erase the Sami community. Now there’s a truth and reconciliation process happening in all three countries. We want to decide which stories we need to tell rather than having some other institution define our narrative directions.
THE STORIES CONTAIN all the knowledge YOU NEED to survive ”
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