A Sámi in Hollywood: Nils Gaup’s Transnational and Generic Negotiations

• Main Author: Iversen, Gunnar
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2019
• Subjects: Kautokeino
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/edinburgh/9781474438056.003.0012

This chapter examines Norwegian film director Nils Gaup, who made several international productions, starting with the adventure film Shipwrecked (Håkon Håkonson, 1990), co-produced by Disney. Gaup’s international films are rich examples of the circulation and appropriation of ideas in inter- and transnational genre films. Shipwrecked and Tashunga/North Star (1996) constitute attempts to create a Euro-Hollywood production that reimagines the adventure film or the western genre. The genre elements of the Western were honed by Gaup in his Oscar-winning film about an ancient Sámi legend Ofelaš (Pathfinder, 1987); Gaup has since made several feature length films set in Sápmi that evoke well-known Hollywood genre stipulations, such as the historical epic Kautokeino-Oppøret (The Kautokeino Rebellion, 2008) and Glassdukkene (Glass Dolls, 2014). Shipwrecked and Tashunga are Gaup’s most ambitious attempts to negotiate between international genre elements and aspects of Sámi or Norwegian culture.