Like Sámis do : A postcolonial and intersectional analysis of the contemporary film representations and self-representations of the Sámi people

• Main Author: Hernández Rejón, Mónica
• Format: Bachelor Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholms universitet, Filmvetenskap 2016
• Subjects: Sámi; Swedish; documentary; road movies; postcolonial; intersectional; identity; representation; ethnicity; gender; class; nationality
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-131499

The film representation of the Sámi people has evolved during the last century from the ethnographic portrayals that reproduce a romantic stereotype of the good savages, to feature and documentary films that discuss the Sámi identity and its colonial history. In recent years a new generation of Sámi and Swedish documentary directors have focused their work on analysing the impact that multiple structures of power actually have in the production of the Sámi identity and culture. In this research I explore the intersections of such structures in the documentary road movies Sámi Daughter Yoik (2007) by the Sámi-Swedish director Liselotte Wajstedt, and The Only Image of My Father (2004) by the Swedish director Kine Boman. The main purpose of the research is to examine the discussions of identity that these films propose and to analyse the strategies with which the directors question the simplistic representation of the Sámi people. Based on the postcolonial and intersectional perspectives, the text offers a critique of the discourses of authenticity that confine the Sámi identity into the frame of ethnicity. The study gives special attention to the different layers that the directors' identities involve and their role in the construction of alternative representations of the Sámi people. A relevant finding is that the directors have succeeded in representing the Sámi people as complex and heterogeneous, helped by their choices on genre, authorship and their own approach to identity as a performative, multidimensional and dynamic process.