feature article: Contemporary experimental feminist Sámi documentary: The first person politics of Liselotte Wajstedt and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers

Abstract This article examines two experimental documentary feminist Sámi films by Liselotte Wajstedt and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. Their works deploy experimental techniques such as cell and computer animation, time-lapse photography and superimposition, along with autobiographical voice-overs, thereby challenging many dominant tropes of Sámi filmmaking, including the preponderance of realism and cultural revivalist narratives. Through ‘first person’ filmmaking, Wajstedt’s Sami Daughter Yoik (2007) and Tailfeathers’ Rebel (2014) and Colonial Gaze Sámi Artists’ Collective (co-directed with Nango, 2012) explore the hybridity of identity, trauma, cultural memory and the status of documentary films as artistic practice. The films are situated within larger recent developments in Sámi filmmaking, including initiatives by the International Sámi Film Institute. This article reframes the perimeters of both Sámi and Scandinavian documentary filmmaking in the twenty-first century.