Liivo Niglas

Journey Home

Portrait of Eva Toulouze, a polyglot ethnologist and fennougrist who also works as a translator and lecturer.

To Save a Language

Linguist Indrek Park has been working with Native American languages for over ten years. The film sees him recording the language of the Mandan tribe, who live in the prairies of North Dakota, on the banks of the Missouri River. The job involves a lot of responsibility, and he is running out of time – his language guide, the 84-year-old Edwin Benson, is the last native speaker of Mandan.

The Land of Love

"The Land of Love" is a documentary film about reindeer, oil, politics and poetry. It tells a story about Yuri Vella, a Forest Nenets reindeer herder and poet who lives in the taiga of Western Siberia, and who tries to prove that one person can stand against the great power that is destroying the environment of the native people.

Itelmen Stories

Itelmen Stories is a poignant tale of the social and personal significance of a language that is near the end of its existence as an orally transmitted means of communication. The film presents both the speaking of the Itelmen language, as it exists today and the meaning of using it in the past and the present. The action in the film revolves around an ancestrally used practice of hunting sable by net. Set in rural Kamchatka in the Russian Far East, where fewer than 20 speakers of Itelmen remain, the film goes beyond its original aim to recapture a language and a hunting practice that are remembered but no longer in use. Two hunters encounter the wild environs and villages of Kamchatka as a history laden homeland and memories, nostalgia, resignation and hope echo throughout the film.

If Vagina Had Teeth: The Shona Rainmaking Ceremony in Western Mozambique

"Ritual reversals" or "rituals of rebellion" are concepts used for mock rituals performed in Southern and Eastern Africa. During fertility rituals, like rain ceremonies, women in their songs and dances demonstrate obscene behaviour while they behave like men. These are secret performances open strictly for elderly men and women. Still, we were invited to record the rain making ceremony in the land of Chief Chassuka, Manika Province in Mozambique, in order to document the ritual for the younger generations. These rituals are a fading tradition probably due to the special character of the songs and dances.

Yuri Vella's World

The documentary follows Yuri Vella, writer and social activist of the Forest Nenets living in West-Siberia. To give his grandchildren proper education in their natural environment, he establishes an elementary school in his winter camp.