Dolos niegut – Ancient dreams (2022) by Marja Viitahuhta and Ánnámáret is screened at WOW Wales One World Film Festival, held on March 3 to April 7 2023 both in Wales and online. The short film is also part of Māoriland Film Festival‘s this years program along with Viitahuhta’s and Ánnámáret’s earlier collaboration work Mánnu – Moon (2021, in featured image). Māoriland Film Festival takes place on March 15-19 2023, in Ōtaki, New Zealand.
Viitahuhta’s and Ánnámáret’s short film Mánnu is included in Māoriland Film Festival’s “Toi Te Mana” screening, which is on Thursday March 16 at 7 p.m. in Maoriland Hub. The festival also presents Dolos niegut –Ancient dreams as part of the screening “Te Mea Ngaro“, taking place on Sunday March 19, at 12:45 p.m. in Civic Theatre. Dolos niegut is also screened in WOW Wales One World Film Festival’s “Land : Language : Life” programme, which is held on Tuesday March 28 at 4 p.m. in Aberystwyth Arts Centre.
The memories and documented imagery of reindeer herding and nomadic ways of life mix with the contemporary herding of reindeers in Dolos Niegut – Ancient dreams, an experimental music video to a track by Ánnámáret, Ilkka Heinonen and Turkka Inkilä from the album Nieguid duovdagat. How we perceive our everyday life affects our views as well as our imagination, our hopes and dreams. The lives connected to other beings, in this case the reindeer and how the Sámi people have lived in relation to it as well as our dependency with our environment, is present in this work. In this yoik, Ánnámáret also reaches to imagine how our predecessors perceived this world and what may remain of them in the currents of the time that we live in and in the ways we function in it. The video is part of a continuum of video works made in collaboration with Viitahuhta, Ánnámáret, Heinonen and Inkilä.
In Mánnu, the yoik by sami musician Ánnámáret describes how the moon can take power over the viewer, putting him in danger and a state that cannot be escaped but must be confronted. On dark nights, one can imagine the Staalo, evil spirits in the indigenous sami mythology, walking in the northern forests – or wandering in the minds of people. The words in Ánnámáret’s yoik translate as: “Moon – I surrender”. The video travels in both the inner worlds as well as real Sámi landscapes, envisioned from both a human and a bird’s perspective. The work continues the long-standing collaboration between Viitahuhta and Ánnámáret and the series of video works created during that collaboration. Parts of the work are also used as part of Ánnámáret’s concert Nieguid duovdagat, in which Viitahuhta accompanies the music with her video works. The music also includes Ilkka Heinonen’s Jouhikko (finnish bowed lyre) and Turkka Inkilä’s electronic music.
Māoriland Film Festival, March 15-19 2023, Ōtaki, New Zealand.
More information: MFF.
WOW Wales One World Film Festival, March 3 – April 7, Wales & online.
More information: WOW Film Festival.