Film Globally, Watch Locally; a Planet's Worth of Native Cinema

Summary

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There's something almost inherently mystical about films set in the stark landscapes of the far north. Past NCS programs took audiences to the frozen tundra of Nunavut (The Fast Runner) and Greenland (Heart of Light), and the tradition continues this year with A Bride of the Seventh Heaven, set on the Yamal peninsula, which is home to northwest Siberia's indigenous Nenet people. The wan sky and waving grasses aren't the only mystical things in this film from Nenet director Anastasia Lapsui. Shot in stark, elegant black and white compositions that wouldn't look out of place in an early David Lynch movie, the film is built around a storytelling session between an old woman and her blind granddaughter. A sparse soundtrack that makes use of bells, wind and human breathing lends a dreamlike quality to the old woman's tale: At birth, a local shaman decreed that she was to be betrothed to the god Num, and this decree marked her as something of a social outcast for the rest of her life. The story is told inside a dimly lit tepee that seems as though it's the only place in the world, and Lapsui further loosens our grasp on reality with sudden flashbacks and sporadic appearances from the ghostly Num, shrouded in white furs. A Bride of the Seventh Heaven leaves the impression of a raw, uncontextualized encounter with another culture's undiluted strangeness, but it's a strangeness possessed of quiet, reflective beauty, and Lapsui's technique is breathtakingly bold, confident and inventive throughout.

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Film Globally, Watch Locally; a Planet's Worth of Native Cinema

In conjunction with The Pond Foundation and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian, CCA Cinematheque has sponsored a diverse program of indigenous film and video for four years running. There truly is something for everyone at CCA this we...

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