Way to the Sacred Place

The filmmaker traces events of his own travel in 1996 to the famous Yamal sanctuary, The Seven Tents, at the northern tip of the Yamal Peninsula in northwestern Siberia. The film depicts Nenets nomadic reindeer herders' lives, myths, and rituals. Playing by chance a role of pilgrim, the ethnographer encountered many extraordinary and esoteric things. The figure of the patron-spirit "mistress of the tent" , image of the Goddess of Yamal, people (including the author) and reindeer participating in sacrifices and purifications - all of these happened along one and the same road, the sacred path to the Seven Tents. Historically, that was the way by which the Nenets' ancestors came to the northern coastal tundra called Yamal (End of the Land).

• Winner of the First Annual Russian Anthropological Film Festival, Salekhard, Russia, 1998

Filmed and Produced by Andrei Golovnev. Original in Russian, 1997. Runtime 47 minutes - in English