Just few days back i was on marathon to rewatch the works of Peter Mettler, Zdravko Velimirovic, Andres Sööt, 'Miki' Stamenkovic, Andrea Tonacci, Mladomir Purisa Dordevic, Gilles Groulx, Sibylle Tiedemann, Andres Veiel, Jom Tob Azulay, Ivars Seleckis, Jorgen Leth, Dominique Delouche, Mark Soosaar, Franco Piavoli, Henrikas Sablevicius, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Pierre Perrault, Kamal Aljafari, Heidi Specogna, Alanis Obomsawin and Michael Pilz. I then added couple of Stefan Jarl's titles and i was so immersed with his catalogue, he is one of the very best documentarian working on a really exciting project till date.
In the "Land of the Lapps (Samernas land)," Stefan Jarl travels around Sápmi, a cultural region in northern Europe inhabited by Sámi indigenous people. More precisely, he jumps back and forth juxtaposing the harsh reality. He presents some of the most pressing issues of the region, the desolated landscape looks haunted. He then shows us the locals of Sápmi, there is a man and his reference to Ivan the terrible as he continues with his chores. We then see a a choir singing and collecting offering, a man photobombs and screams at the camera. In the second, Jarl places his camera on a young boy waiting to cross the road, he seems low-spirited but pets his dog with a rainbow in the background. This scene is shot so beautifully with a leisurely pace but then cuts to experimental editing techniques with glass break juxtaposing the reality of evils of modern man, there's a scene of hunting a ptarmigan and making a event out of it, all this to the archival images of the ancestors.
There's still so many details as Jarl captures a future which does not promise anything good but life continues. He focuses on giving this plot a classic treatment, but he keeps it on experimental with an extremely dense, oppressive atmosphere shot with seemingly simplest means.
