A still from ‘Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest’
The Skolt Sámi are a nomadic people, the original indigenous population of the borderland area between present-day Finland, Russia and Norway. At this year’s Berlinale ‘Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest’, a heartfelt film made by the descendant of one Skolt Sámi woman about her great-grandmother Kaisa, kicked off their NATIVe - Indigenous Cinema section. But why a film about this remote tribe, whose members have suffered at the hands of the Russians, the Finnish and the treaties of the entire world pre and post-WWII — why now?
Exactly because Katia Gauriloff’s film, part animated poetry, part archival documentary and entirely a love song to her grandma and her people, is the perfect mirror to hold up to our present-day Europe. A Europe that is becoming more divided, without knowing just where that will bring us. Could we one day end up a society that segregates because of tribes, origin, religion or sexual orientation? While the concept seems far away and worlds apart from our contemporary reality, we are a bit like a vessel traveling on a calm river, right before tumbling into the wild waterfall. We can’t see it in the distance, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.
I found ‘Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest’ beautiful, touching, empowering and wonderfully entertaining to watch. While Gauriloff purposely shies away from making it a first person narrative, which she easily could have done because of her own experiences being a Sámi and growing up in Finland, she makes a choice to tell this tale through the eyes of Swiss writer Robert Crottet and the photographic lens of his life partner Enrique Mendez. Crottet met Kaisa in the 1930s and continued to be a part of her life until the 70s. He fought for Sámi rights and acted as their spokesman in post-war Europe, and through the relief organization he founded in Great Britain, as well as the revenues from his book of folk tales ‘Forêts de la lune’ (’The Enchanted Forest’) he helped the Skolt Sámi people to get a start on a new life in war-torn Lapland. It’s no wonder Gauriloff calls him “extended family”.
‘Kaisa’s Enchanted Forest’ has gone on to win the Jussi Award (Finnish industry award) for Best Documentary.
I caught up with the lovely, kind, soft-spoken yet incredibly strong-willed Katia Gauriloff in Berlin and following are the highlights of our talk.
Were you always inspired to make a film about your great grandmother, or did you see the footage about her and that sparked the inspiration for your film?
Katia Gauriloff: I had been thinking to make a film about my great grandmother already more than a decade. But I never had a real form on how to make it. And then in 2012, I was here in Berlin with my previous film ‘Canned Dreams’, and around that time I realized how I would make the film. It was through Robert Crottet’s point of view and of course I also knew him from the photo albums, because he’s like extended family to us.
But he had passed away by then…
Gauriloff: Correct, I knew that they [he and his partner Mendez] had film and photo cameras always with them. I had seen the books. I knew there was some material but I didn’t find it anywhere. I started to look in all the film archives, I asked many people in Finland and no one knew anything. Then I got a hint in Spain. We sent a postcard to Enrique Méndez and he sent a postcard to us and it was signed “Enrique Méndez”. He invited me, he was already nearly ninety years old and I didn’t even know that he was alive anymore. I went there in 2013 and he said, “I have all the material here,” all the films, hundreds of photos, all the written material, everything that was left from Robert.
Filmmaker Katia Gauriloff
That’s amazing because then it is a story about your great grandmother of course, but it is also a story about Crottet.
Gauriloff: I needed to have a distance from myself and my family, it’s all so intimate this story, and Robert Crottet, his point of view was a great distance. Also from him we got this traveling form, it’s like a journal.
Did you learn something about yourself from watching your grandmother, from watching your people, from what you found in Crottet’s visual journals?
Gauriloff: It made me understand more of course where I come from, but I also understand more about myself. There is a lot of romantic stuff that he was writing and I was very critical about it. But for me it was more of a healing process to make this film, for myself and my identity.
Had you disconnected from your Sámi identity a little bit?
Gauriloff: I don’t have the language, because my parents’ generation they thought it was better not to speak Sámi anymore but speak only Finnish in the family. They had to feel shame about who they were, because when they went through boarding school, the Sámi language was forbidden.
Did you ever feel really emotional while making the film?
Gauriloff: Oh yeah. The most emotional part — we had a lot of material but didn’t know if it would really work — is how it touches other people. I mean, all in the film have passed away decades ago, and we wondered if we could really make it touching. After a year editing the film, the first time we watched it with my editor, the rough cut, we were just crying. And then I knew.
What is one lesson we could learn from Kaisa?
Gauriloff: The “mother of the earth” aspect, because she was so connected with nature.
Finally, how would you describe yourself?
Gauriloff: I always thought I was very introverted but after I went to live back in the North, after 18 years living in southern Finland, now I understand I’m not. I’m really outgoing! This is something I’ve learned of myself, in the last few years.
Images used with permission.