Arctic Indigenous Film Fund participated in the documentary and short film festival Nordisk Panorama, in Malmö from 21–26 September. The film foundation co-arranged a seminar with the festival and presented a short film anthology.
AIFF’s CEO and film commissioner, Liisa Holmberg, moderated a seminar Telling Stories, Creating Futures, that featured three panelists from the Arctic: Alberte Parnuuna (Greenland), Jason Ryle (Canada) and Elle Márjá Eira (Sápmi). In the seminar, discussions revolved around how indigenous filmmaking is shifting and the effects of this change.
Indigenous filmmakers and films have moved out of the margins and more into focus in recent years. Under Holmberg’s lead panelists dug into, what this development entails and how indigenous filmmakers of the Arctic are working together across national borders. It matters greatly, who gets to tell which stories and how they are told. In the seminar, panelists pondered how storytelling through film affects personal and community identity, the role that arts and creative industries can play in potential reconciliation processes, and how film plays a role in shaping the future.
Besides the seminar AIFF also participated in the festival film program with a horror short film anthology, Arctic Chills. The series included three supernatural stories created by Indigenous filmmakers from the circumpolar Arctic: Imajuik by Marc Fussing Rosbach, Irninnu Unikaara by Ipeelie Ootoova, and Unborn Biru by Inga Elin Marakatt. Arctic Chills brought audiences into ice-cold landscapes on the edges of survival in the Earth’s Far North, presenting terrifying beings and ancient horrors never before seen on screen.
