Out of the Corner

A film by Maria Kirpichenko,
Country: Russia,
Duration: 27min,
Language: Russian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2012

The film gives the opportunity to see several women from Russia who are engaged in boxing on the highest level of the National Women’s Boxing Team. We follow them in different places and tasks and become acquainted with their strong personalities. Women’s boxing and “traditional” Russian society seem to oppose each other but when we get closer stereotypes gradually vanish, though they remain at the formal (state) level. Main heroes of the film: Anastasia Zapolskaya (Makarova), Serafima Makarova, Lubov Pashina. The action takes place in Karelia (North of Russia), Krasnoarmeisk (boxing training camp near Moscow), Novosibirsk (Russia Women’s Boxing Championship, Siberia), Anapa (boxing training camp, South of Russia). The film is not about boxing itself but about women who dared to enter the “male domain” (going out of the corner) and still try to fit into the traditional gender roles (putting them(selves) into boxes).

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Uncle Oddvar and the Wave

A film by Katriina Pedersen,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 32min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2011

Uncle Oddvar and The Wave is a character-driven film about a soon to be a 70-year-old fisherman from a little village in the north of Norway. Every spring and summer he produces stockfish for a global market as one of the last ones in the village. We follow uncle Oddvar and his stockfish from April to September and get a glimpse into the life of a fisherman. Through uncle Oddvar’s stories and songs, the film brings up themes of traditional knowledge, aging, fish farming, the outside world, and the environment.

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We Can Almost Fly

A film by Maria Gradin,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 28min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2006

The film is a study of the concept of New Circus through a circus group in Tromsø (Norway), Circus Kulta. It consists of children, youth, and a group of professional New Circus performers. In the film, we can follow them from personal challengers to mastering and from practicing to performances.

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Yerv of the Tundra

A film by Zoia Ravna,
Country: Russia,
Duration: 32min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2002

Somebody is born to follow the wind—somebody to fight. A group of Nenets reindeer herders once decided to opt-out from the collective system. Do they manage to do it? How? This is the history of the organisation of private reindeer owners “Yerv”, their life and struggle in the difficult natural and social conditions of the Russian Arctic.

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Skolliales

A film by Haukur Sigurdsson,
Country: Iceland,
Duration: 30min,
Language: Icelandic,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2012

Wild eider ducks come back year after year to the same nesting grounds, areas where they know they are safe from predators. In Dyrafjordur fjord in northwest Iceland, a group of gentlemen dedicates more than two months out of the year taking care to protect these ducks. In return, they get to keep the valuable eiderdown that the ducks provide for their nests. The duck’s main predator is the arctic fox, Iceland’s only native land mammal. The foxes come down from the hills and into the fields during the bright arctic nights. The eider farmers are ready to fight the sly fox with old jeeps and guns, home-made poetry, and cakes. Skolliales is a film about man’s relationship with nature. It’s the story of eider farmers and neighbors, Valdimar and Zófonías, and their friends. Between the men, the eider ducks, and the arctic fox there is a unique relationship that is based on understanding, respect, and friendship.

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The Language of My Heart

A film by Sirkka Seljevold,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 35min,
Language: Finnish,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2007

They were not allowed to speak their mother tongue, Kven, at school and they could not understand their teacher’s language, Norwegian. People from the neighbouring country, Finland, were laughing at their ‘old Finnish’. This film is about how experiences with one’s stigmatised mother tongue have life-long consequences on one’s identity, self-esteem, and experience of belonging. We meet Solgunn and Terje from a Kven village, Børselv in Northern Norway. Each in her/his own way takes up a fight for the right to their own mother tongue, the right to a whole identity. The Kven minority population of Northern Norway has been a target of strong assimilation politics for over 100 years. As a result, their language is now dying out. But some brave and determined souls have not given up…

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Freedom is Here

A film by Sidse Torstholm Larsen,
Country: Greenland,
Duration: 49min,
Language: Greenlandic,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2007

Junk, a 45-year-old man from the town Ilulissat in the Northwestern part of Greenland, most of all treasures his freedom. For him, the kind of living that makes him happy is inconsistent with town-life – every day run by the clock and other people’s decision-making. In the great ice fiord some 30 miles from town, Junnguk and a group of other men are making their living by catching halibut and hunting seals the way it has been done in generations by their fathers, grandfathers, and those before them. Throughout the winter months, Junnguk and his fellows travel by dog sled to the ice fiord spending days in each other’s company while howling their long lines before returning to town with their catch. This is a story about friendship, feeling at home, tradition, modernity in contemporary Greenland, and most importantly: finding one’s path through life.

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Our Precious Norwegian Air

A film by Kristin Nicolaysen,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 37min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2003

Mahmoud and Karwan are Kurds from northern Iraq. In 1999 they crossed the Norwegian border hidden in truck containers. They both applied for asylum. We follow their daily life in a small north Norwegian village. Joy, sorrow, hopes, and longing are expressed. After two and three years their applications are turned down. Knowing that returning is to risk their lives, they appeal the rejections. The film point at paradoxes in Norwegian politics towards asylum seekers, and may serve to give some reflections around the question of integration.

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No Terminal!

A film by Vadim Lichatchev,
Country: Russia,
Duration: 46min,
Language: Russian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2003

The film is a chronicle of a few weeks struggle conducted by a small group of eco-activists supported by Cossacks and locals, against the construction of an ammonia-terminal by the chemical corporation TogliattiAzot. No Terminal! was the slogan on banners near the protest camp and posters, appealing for protests in the small village of Taman on the cost of the Black sea. Blockades of office, arrests, hunger strikes, demonstrations, and protest meetings are a part of the daily life of the eco-activists, contrasted by the quiet resort life in the area where the Cossack’s celebration takes place.

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Light as Steam

A film by Leonid Savelyev,
Country: Russia,
Duration: 32min,
Language: Russian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2014

The film will acquaint the viewer with the modern practice of the ancient tradition of the Russian bath and tell about the non-ordinary emotional experience of its practitioners. Four men, very old friends from different places of Russia, of various kinds of professions, incomes, and family statuses come to a rural isolated farmstead inside of venerable coniferous forest to a small village in the northeast of Leningrad Region. They come here once or twice a month to take a Russian bath, smell a free river wind, and listen to the music of the forest and feel its calmness. Far away from busy city streets inside the picturesque pinery, there is a small wooden house – real Russian banya, which is waiting for them.

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