Moving Worlds Through Moving Pictures: Exploring the Emancipatory Force of the Contemporary Sámi Film Industry

Abstract

This dissertation collaborates with the insights of an assemblage of seven individuals involved in the indigenous film industry in the Nordic Arctic. Assisted by the qualified knowledge of this collection of film directors, screenwriters, producers, festival directors, programmers, academics and artists and experience as an audience member at this year’s Tromsø International Film Festival - the thesis locates ‘openings’ for dialogue between indigenous and majority cultures. The essay argues that the Sámi film industry intentionally harnesses hybridity, creating a window of exchange and a mutual moulding between diverse worlds of experience. Tracing back an ethic of universality propagated by European Enlightenment thought, I seek to challenge the narrow notions that have confined Indigenous ways of knowing and being. The dissertation locates power in plurality by investigating the structures and relations that constitute the dynamism of the contemporary Sámi film industry, posing it as an articulation of indigenous creative sovereignty that works to resist the expectations and dichotomies imposed from outside.