DocLisboa: Anastasia Lapsui & Markku Lehmuskallio

Doclisboa (that takes place 19-29.10) will present another momentous retrospective – with the support of the Finnish Film Foundation – dedicated to the cinema of Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio: this is the first complete retrospective dedicated to the directors.

Anastasia Lapsui, director and screenwriter, born in 1944 in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, then territory of the Soviet Union, and Markku Lehmuskallio, director and director of photography, born in 1938 in Finland, have dedicated their lives and their work together to the indigenous peoples of the North: the Sami, Inuit, Nenets, Chukchi and Selkup, among others. In attempting to convey the ways of seeing and the culture of these peoples, whom they film through a wide variety of cinematic approaches, they have documented their lives and created a unique body of work.

Lehmuskallio worked as a forester in Finland and was introduced to filmmaking while creating instructional films. Lapsui, born into a nomadic family, was the first Indigenous radio journalist in Yamal. Their filmography includes the first Finnish feature in which the Sami people speak their own language, as well as Seven Songs from the Tundra, the first narrative film ever made in the Nenets language. While their cinematic project became a great anthropological study, it is – even – more than that. Nature, ecology, forests and the animal kingdom, plus our planet itself, are among the essential themes they adventurously approach. Lapsui and Lehmuskallio carry on the Flaherty legacy, without, however, repeating its approach. Their films can be seen as a collection of different possibilities for cinema to exist (perhaps, that is why the idea of painting and of how to turn reality into fiction is a recurrent motif in their ouevre).

Share your love
Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

Articles: 3927