Yaptik-Hasse

Yaptik-Hasse is one of the younger members of the very large Yaptik family. He is also their good spirit and therefore privileged to ride on a holy slide. As it is the end of August the Nenets people commence their journey in the 'middle-world' as usual (under-world - the north, upper-world - the south, middle-world - the way). Their camp was in the tundra, on the Yamal Peninsula. We meet Jarkalyn, who is only one year old and Jako, his two and a half years old brother, who is already very precise at throwing the lasso; there is also Ejne, without children, the parents, and the 90-year-old shaman Iri Tadibe (felt age: 35) as well as the eldest, Chado, who was all her life considerate of the reindeers and therefore never carried or pulled by them. Film-maker Edgar Bartenev chooses three different means to tell the story of the breathtaking everyday life of these Siberian nomads. Music (relatively aggressive, structuring the rhythm of perception), inter-titles (fairy-tale-like and funny), and last but not least a camera. Yet, the latter is used in a very sophisticated way, well above the feature-film standard. The result is one of the most exciting forms to reanimate the ethnographic genre in an alienated way!