Food Stories

A film by Eline Arnevåg Lågeide,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 30min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2016

Food Stories is a film that explores how particular food commodities are related to memories and emotions. The film is an outcome of three-month fieldwork at Alanya Import, a greengrocery shop at Storgata in Tromsø, Norway. Different customers and goods are being followed through daily grocery shopping, cooking, and sharing a meal. The film’s point of departure is how the customers relate to their food from their home countries. Various perspectives are presented in sensory meetings at kitchens around Tromsø. Food becomes a window into different immigration and globalization processes. Furthermore, does the film presents an insight into kids growing up in several contexts when it comes to food traditions.

Interview with the filmmaker:
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Hunting the Halibut

A film by Bjørn Arntsen,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 51min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2004

A film on the halibut fisheries outside Senja in Northern Norway.

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Few Are like Father No One like Mother

A film by Lisbet Høltedahl,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 1h05min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 1987

A film about women’s lives in the fishing village of Ersfjordbotn in northern Norway. Filmed in the middle of the 1980s, when the regions of Northern Norway were undergoing rapid social change, the film presents several personal life stories of elderly and younger women, problematizing the social marginalization of local women.

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Freedom to Choose

A film by Solveig Joks,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 31min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 1999

Inga has ended her herding husbandry and joined the “readjustment” program courtesy of the Norwegian State. Together with her husband, she has started a Sami handicraft business. She and other women have always done handicrafts, also during herding husbandry. It was always an additional economic activity to the reindeer herding.

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A Female Elk Hunter

A film by Anne Myrstad,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 30min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 1998

Mona is one of the few female elk hunters in northern Norway. The film reveals Mona’s reasons and motives for participating in elk hunting.

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Niger-Norway

A film by Lisbet Høltedahl,
Country: Niger, Norway,
Duration: 40min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 1975

A comparison of women’s life in Niger and Norway. Film footage and photos were taken at the beginning of the 1970s in the village of Maïné-Soroa, in Eastern Niger, juxtaposed with audio-visual material from Tromsø in Northern Norway. Using a simple, didactic voice-over, the film questions many stereotypes about women’s lives in Africa and Norway. It is an attempt to use audio-visual tools and fieldwork experience to teach cross-cultural understanding and ethnocentrism in Norway.

Interview with the Filmmaker:
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A Trip to the White Peoples Jungle

A film by Djesa Rachel,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 12min,
Language: English,
Subtitles: N/A,
Year: 1998

A very personal film-essay made by Rachel Issa Djesa shortly after coming to Tromsø in northern Norway to study visual anthropology. Looking at the new environment from her Cameroonian point of view, she expresses her thoughts and feelings about the place and its inhabitants.

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As Long As You Want

A film by Cecilie Denkinger,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 38min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2012

Anne likes looking at old photographs. Stories about people and places come to her mind. By listening to Anne history comes alive. In “As long as you want” we meet Anne in Longyearbyen on the arctic archipelago Svalbard. The modern “family society” started as a company town connected to the coal mining industry that is still important. Anne is 80 years and one of the few retired persons living in this society. Most of the inhabitants stay there for a relatively short period in their working lives. In the summer Anne leaves Svalbard. She visits her childhood place in Norway where her son’s family is living. Next time, she might have left Svalbard forever. Retirement homes don’t exist there.

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Let’s Build a Waterfall

A film by Trond Waage, Anniken Førde,
Country: Norway,
Duration: 37min,
Language: Norwegian,
Subtitles: English,
Year: 2015

As many coastal communities in Northern Norway are threatened by decline and depopulation, are the village Bleik experiencing prosperity; there is competition for house plots and waiting lists at the school. What is it with Bleik? Through following different activities in this community with strong storytelling and voluntary work traditions, the film shows how a fishing community can stand up against centralization and structuring through broad mobilization.

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