Historjá – Stitches For Sápmi

HISTORJÁ - STYGN FÖR SÁPMI

Sweden, 2021, 88' 

Before being the title of Thomas Jackson’s documentary, Historjá is the name that Swedish artist Britta Marakatt-Labba gave to her 24-meter-long tapestry in which she describes the fights of the Sámi culture, to which she belongs, for the acknowledgment of their identity and history. Leitmotifs, images, reminiscences and values of a native people who was settled in the northern part of Fennoscandia – along the borders between Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Russia – are at the core of one of the world’s leading Swedish artists, who works almost exclusively with needle and thread, as well as of the film dedicated to her. The director follows her work and thought regarding major contemporary issues, in the first place climate change and the fight for the right of ethnic minorities. And, while Britta Marakatt-Labba prepares an important exhibition in Germany (Documenta 14, Kassel) and invites the audience to get closer to the material and ideal universe of her productions, in the faraway land of the Sámi (which its inhabitants call Sapmí) her son carries on the century-old tradition of pastoral farming immersed in a universe suspended between past and present, utopia and reality.