An intimate exploration of craft practice as a portal to a sense of belonging.

Her Inherent Belonging is a character-driven documentary exploring how craft as a practice connects humans to place, their ancestral past and the present moment. Craft offers a holistic experience often lacking in our digitally-dominated modern world. Working with one’s hands harmonizes the whole human: unifying intellect, heart and hand. Feeling a strong sense of belonging reminds us of our interdependence with each other and the natural world. When we are rooted in this feeling of belonging, we are more able to contribute to creating a world that serves the whole.

By following the lives of Finnish craftswomen from the quiet darkness of Finland’s long winter into the midnight sun of summer, Her Inherent Belonging will transport audiences into the intimacy of their studios and their home forests to explore how their craft connects them to who they are. Thoughtful, cinematic, and rooted in character, Her Inherent Belonging is an ode to the interconnection between people, craft and place - a way of being eloquently embodied in Finland.

Support

Support Her Inherent Belonging - All contributions are tax-deductible in the U.S. thanks to the generosity of our fiscal sponsor the International Folk Art Market, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Your contributions will help with the many hard costs associated with completing the film and bringing this story to audiences. Add “For Her Inherent Belonging Film” in the Additional Information - Comments section.

Why Craft?

“Working with one’s hands harmonizes intellect, manual skill and character in a way that underscores the artificiality of the cartesian divide between mind and body. When you add the creative component of design, craft becomes a fully integrated application of one’s capacities.” - Peter Korn

More broadly, what we make with our hands is a critical part of our collective cultural heritage. Our living cultural heritage is a resource that binds people together. In our interdependent world, it is also one of the most powerful resources we have to innovate and transform our communities. Our cultural diversity and creativity expressed through the world’s artists, creators and makers helps shift our collective perspective, renew ideas and respond to global challenges. In a modern global system that increasingly values convenience and cost over cultural heritage and the handmade, many traditional ways of life are threatened and their opportunities to evolve are limited. People are forced to leave rural areas and traditional livelihoods to seek economic opportunities in urban areas, disconnecting from their ancestral ways of life.

Without mindful intention to actively preserve and keep craft traditions relevant, they will not exist for future generations. We would be at risk of losing a critical piece of cultural heritage that shapes our identity and sense of who we are. Therefore, elevating the status of craft through building awareness, encouraging innovation of traditional practices and creating economic opportunities for its sale, will ensure craft’s sustainability for the future.

Why Finland?

Topping the World’s Happiness Report for the 8th year in a row, it’s evident Finland, Finns and their cultural values and practices are worthy of deep exploration.

Since the devastating destruction of Europe in World War II, there has been an international awareness of the necessity to safeguard cultural heritage as it strengthens our sense of who we are, where we came from and where we might go as humans in the future. Our living heritage enriches our lives in countless ways but also is the key to our survival.

In the beginning of the 1900s in Finland, individuality, creativity and handicrafts skills were stressed along with the values of internationalism and having a universally-educated population. Training in the field developed, crafts were practiced to an increasing degree and the use of different materials expanded. Craft studies became a university-level subject, permitting students of craft to pursue their studies to a doctoral level. By the 1980s, there was a growing awareness of environmental concerns and problems that led to meaningful discussions on the life-span of products and ethical sourcing of materials used. Finland’s craft culture continues to evolve with the growing needs of present times.

Finland can stand as an example for other places in the world where cultural heritage practices are at risk of being forgotten. There is a chronic urgency to acknowledge what could be lost and what has already been lost as humans set their sites on new technology that takes us even farther away from the tangible world. Finland can be seen as a model for the rest of the world for how to preserve both natural and cultural heritage for future generations.

Story & Structure

By following the lives of Finnish craftswomen from the quiet darkness of Finland’s long winter into the midnight sun of summer, Her Inherent Belonging will transport audiences into the intimacy of their day-to-day lives, studios and home forests. Through each of their lives and practices, the film explores a different aspect of belonging: To Place, To Time (Past & Future), To Now (The Present Moment). The film weaves their subtly-connected stories together by underscoring themes of resiliency, wholehearted dedication and innovation.

To Place - Hanna N. of Kemiönsaari

Hanna Nore is a Finnish Master Traditional Tanner. It all began when she processed her first squirrel at age 12. Voracious to learn the craft at a young age, she begged her parents and even the school librarian to find her books on the subject. Just ten years later, Hanna was teaching tanning to people twice her age. Hanna is committed to using ethically-mindful techniques as an alternative to toxic industrial methods and she teaches anyone else who wants to learn the same. Now with over 16 years of teaching and her books, she has single-handedly revived an almost-lost traditional profession.

She’s recently been tasked with a very important challenge: a group of women from Lapland working in the reindeer herding industry are coming to her workshop on the Finnish archipelago from above the arctic circle to learn alternative ways to use leather and fur. Since the pandemic drastically disrupted the market by creating a surplus of reindeer products, the price for them is at an all time low and many northern communities rely on reindeer for their livelihoods. They are now seeking to innovate upon their traditional knowledge in the hopes to keep their ways of life relevant for the future…

To Time (Past & Future) - Mervi Pasanen of Lahti & Heli Karmakallio of Turku

Mervi is a local newspaper journalist in Lahti. One summer, she was reporting on a story of a medieval fair and was immediately hooked. Twenty years later she is a master craftswoman and world-renowed specialist in Finnish Iron Age crafts. Mervi says she “LARPs” her day job and her real life is in craft. She feels a responsibility to share this knowledge and contribute to understanding our past. Mervi works with archaeologists all over Scandinavia to identify and recreate textiles found at dig sites. She is currently working on a never-before found textile recreation informed by DNA samples. She has until summer solstice to plant dye, weave and sew the piece to be presented in an upcoming Ancient DNA exhibition.

Feeling out of place in the traditional university, Heli enrolled in Finland’s only Ancient Techniques program. There, students learn everything from spinning wool, tablet weaving to blacksmithing. Heli has always been drawn to animal bones found in her home forests and creates modern jewelry using ancient techniques learned in school. Following the threads of her curiosities, she is now building her career at the Turku Archaeological Museum looking to the past to better understand her place in the world. Heli represents the future and the beginning of Mervi’s journey as craftswomen marrying tradition with innovation carrying forward their tangible cultural heritage.

To Now - Hanna P. of Tuupovaara

Hanna Piipponen is a master shoemaker spending the last 12 years making shoes. Trained as a visual artist, when she began experimenting with shoemaking she was immediately drawn to the process for its many steps and working with line, colors and three-dimensional shapes. Hanna studied shoemaking for six years and then apprenticed with a master shoemaker and took over his shop in her small town of Tuupovaara. Tuupovaara, a small town in eastern Finland, used to be a thriving artisan village known particularly for its cobblers. Today, Hanna is one of two people that still make traditional Finnish shoes in the entire country. Through Hanna’s story, audiences are invited into the present moment - illustrating the meditative state that is achieved in the process of making shoes slowly and methodically by hand.

Artistic Approach

Her Inherent Belonging can be described as a “sensory observational documentary”. It will invite audiences to experience an embodied sense of being in the fire-lit warmth of artist studios, in the crisp morning air of dense pine forests and to feel the wind on their face in the vast arctic expanse. By using a slower and spacious filmmaking approach, viewers are encouraged to notice the subtleties in each frame and explore the story for themselves.

Observational Coverage & Precise Composition: Inspired by the works of Kelly Reichardt and Gianfranco Rosi, the film employs long, thoughtfully-composed shots, allowing life to unfold in frame.

Darkness as character: a staple of Finland’s enduring winter, darkness provides a quiet incubation for the imagination of each craftswomen.

Ambient sound as character: the spinning of raw native wool, the textured crackling of burning wood, wind blowing pine trees - ambient sound will be used to create a transporting soundscape and will be woven into the music composition.

Season as pacing: Pacing speed in alignment with the energetic quality of the season. Scenes with fewer shots and thus slower pacing to reflect the Winter season and moving to Spring and Summer swifter pacing to reflect the coming of more light and transitions in nature.

Hybrid Devices: Keeping the possibilities open to employ techniques traditionally from the fiction world will also support creating a sensory experience. For instance, directing ethereal scenes like a character wandering an archaeological site in their handmade Iron Age clothing to create a feeling of a connection to ancestry.

Creative Team

Madison McClintock
Director, Cinematographer & Editor

Madison McClintock is an independent filmmaker and textile artist based in Maine, U.S.A. Madison is drawn to the human stories behind our collective natural and cultural heritage. Through cinema, with its unique ability to reach hearts, she intends to create spaces for audiences to reconnect with the foundational truth that our well-being relies on an interdependent relationship with each other and the “more-than-human-world” If we are proximate with this truth, we are more likely to act on behalf of the whole. Madison has had the privilege to work on predominantly impact-driven filmmaking for her career. Most recently, since 2022 she has worked with National Geographic’s Pristine Seas in field production for stories in the Marshall Islands, Palau and Papua New Guinea - the final films directly supporting the creation of national Marine Protected Areas. She received her BFA in Environmental Studies & Studio Art from Franklin University Switzerland and her MFA in Science & Natural History Filmmaking from Montana State University. Madison’s short films Red Wolf Revival and Fungiphilia Rising have been broadcasted on television and featured at film festivals and in classrooms around the world.

Aino Juutilainen

Music Composer & Sound Designer

Aino Juutilainen is a cellist, composer and sound designer based in Helsinki, Finland. She is educated in classical music but her main focus is in composing and improvising as well as sound art. Her broad contact network includes both classical, jazz and pop musicians, choreographs, dancers, actors, theatre directors and puppet theatre artists. One of her dearest projects is her own group AINON that combines jazz, improvisation and classical music. In addition to that, is a member of Quartet Ajaton, Josu Mämmi trio, Vespera, Mikko Sarvanne Garden and Koi trio.

www.ainojuutilainen.com

Project Origin Story

This inquiry is deeply personal. Being from the U.S. with distant Nordic ancestry, I have felt grief and confusion from having “shallow roots.” I am curious to understand what is lost when we are severed from our ancestral land and cultural heritage and thus identify why it’s so critical for humans to be connected to it. As a textile artist with a focus on natural dyes, working with my hands by growing and foraging plants, is where I feel the most connected to lineage. I feel like I am a part of a continuity of deep understanding of how to work in reciprocity with the environment in which I live - like our ancestors did.

When I met Hannelle Köngäs, Finnish master weaver at theInternational Folk Art Market in New Mexico, the largest gathering of folk artists from around the world, and heard about the vital Finnish craft culture that is both place-based and culturally-valued - my interest was piqued. Hannele was a weaving teacher for over 30 years and many active artisans regard her as an inspiration for why they do what they do. I was introduced to craftswomen from all over Finland eager to share their stories. It is through this relationship building and gaining trust that I arrived at this story.

Filmmaker’s Statement

For me, the filmmaking process is as important as the final film. Humans on the most basic level have the same primary needs, and one is to validate their existence: to be seen. Making documentaries creates a unique opportunity for film participants to reflect on their place and contribution in the world. As filmmakers we are also given intimate access to people’s lives and it is our responsibility to hold that with the utmost sensitivity and respect. Giving our full attention to someone else is the most subtle form of love and our field allows us to express that if we chose to do so. It is my belief that to capture the most authentic story one must first invest in creating a human relationship with their collaborators and to also release one’s expectations of what the story might be and give full attention to what is unfolding through the non-fiction film container.

Working predominantly in impact-driven filmmaking has given me the privilege and responsibility to work on sensitive topics and with communities other than my own. I have made many mistakes, asked for support when I was unsure and learned humbly from my collaborators - creating real, honest human moments. I feel this practice of vulnerability has strengthened me as a filmmaker.

Project Partners

Production Status & Contact

As of January 2025, Her Inherent Belonging is in-production. All images here are stills from the on-going production. Our intention is to premiere the film in late 2026. We are currently seeking support for production costs and finishing funds. We are also looking for a sales agent, promotional and screening partners and open to collaboration on all fronts. Her Inherent Belonging is a fiscally-sponsored project of The International Folk Art Market, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. If you are interested in supporting the production, post-production and circulation of Her Inherent Belonging, please contact Director Madison McClintock or visit the International Folk Art Market Donations page.