THE 48th TAMPERE FILM festival is held between March 7 and 11. The oldest and largest short film festival in the Nordic countries is AV-arkki’s main associate in Finland. THE NATIONAL COMPETITION OF TAMPERE FILM FESTIVAL INCLUDES SEVERAL SHORT FILMS BY AV-ARKKI’S ARTISTS. IN ADDITION, AV-ARKKI HAS CURATED A SPECIAL PROGRAMME CELEBRATING Camp in Finnish media art.
Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki hates small talk but elaborates on his art in The Sleeping Interview (2017).
In Marja Helander’s Eatnanvuloš lottit – Birds in the Earth (2018), Sami dance students Birit and Katja Haarla dance through the villages and lost woods of Sápmi all the way to where the important decisions are made. The polarity of Nature and the Western way of life is filtered through sharp humour.
Jonna Kina’s Arr. for a Scene (2017) was selected not only in the national but also international competition. Arr. for a Scene is a documentary of two foley artists while they are producing sounds for one of the most famous film scene in the film history (the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, 1960). This performance is documented on 35 mm film.
Perttu Saksa’s Animal Image (2018) is a poetic documentary about the infinite relationship between man and animal. In the film, animals are portrayed independent from man made narratives, exposed to life and the presence of time without anthropomorphic view.
Timo Wright’s Ex Nihilo (2018) is an experimental short documentary about life, death and our attempts to control them. It tells the stories of an advanced humanoid robot, a cryonics facility, where the brains of deceased people are held and of a international seed vault, where crop seed from around the world are held frozen.
Sami van Ingen’s Flame (2018) is a fractured melodrama, based on damaged frames from the lost feature film Silja – Fallen Asleep When Young (1937) directed by Teuvo Tulio.
Mika Taanila’s The World (2017) features The Man Who Fell to Earth (dir. Nicolas Roeg 1976) evacuated and flipped. In abandoned landscapes, animals, furniture and empty vehicles are left awaiting for disaster. ”We must have died alone, a long long time ago.” (D.B.)
Antti Tanttu’s blackboard animation Qualia (2017) seeks for the essence of experience. There is no such thing as same feeling, same pain, same colour. Qualia is always subjective. The essence of universal experience is unreachable.
Jan Ijäs’ Waste no. 3 Boom (2017) is an independent episode from a series of seven films entitled Waste. Boom was shot in Kittilä in northern Finland, in a ‘lunar landscape’ on top of a hill where the Finnish armed forces annually disposes of expired explosives. Calculations show that detonation is the least expensive method of disposal.
In Risto-Pekka Blom’s Interceptor (2018) a man tries to stop the queue of black cars.
AV-ARKKI’s Screening pays homage to camp aesthetics
AV-arkki’s special screening at Tampere Film Festival delves into the various forms and possibilities of camp. The screenings take place on Friday, March 9, at 16:00 in Plevna 4 and on Saturday, March 10, at 20:00 in Plevna 6.
On the surface, camp comes across as being frivolous and of bad taste, but deep down it clears the way for alternative representations and ways of being in an uninhibited manner.
Curated by Tytti Rantanen (programme coordinator / AV-arkki) the screening opens with three short films by Rosa Liksom and Plastic Pony that are set in the heart of the subculture of the early 1990s. The films take you, for instance, to the kitchen of the legendary centre for youth culture, Lepakko, and there’s something weird going on in the Eiffel Tower, as well.
The camp of the 2000s is represented by a selection of films by Teemu Keisteri, Tero Puha, Anssi Kasitonni, Petra Innanen and Maria Duncker. The selection features a range of genres from dancing and cactus porn to mockumentary and sci-fi from the small village of Sahalahti.
The screening closes with three short films by Anneli Nygren, the queen of camp based in Turku. Nygren’s video art is inspired by play with dolls, soap operas and synthpop, at which Jonne 59, the toughest rock star in Turku, also tries his hand.
AVEK Presents the classics of Finnish experimental film
During the past three decades, The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture AVEK has funded hundreds of films and works of media art. This year there are two special screenings (Wednesday, March 7 and Friday, March 9) showcasing the best of Finnish short films, animations and documentary films that have received support from AVEK. The screenings include the following works from AV-arkki’s distribution archive:
Milja Viita: Q (2016)
The artist’s firstborn son transformed, in the blink of an eye, into a young man. Q is a conceptual film about forces that change the world. Q takes us to the end of the worlds, the depths of the ocean and to the ruins of Atlantis. Q’s destruction is the road to new growth — it is the only promise of continuity and the emergence of new nations. Q is shot on 16 mm film whose surface has been hand-coloured. But what or who is Q?
Marikki Hakola: Stilleben – Milena’s Journey (1989)
This video work is based on letters written by Franz Kafka to his beloved Milena. The central themes of the piece are distance, longing and memories. The layered imagery relies on the collective memories of the viewer. The starting point for this is master composer Kaija Saariaho’s radiophonic work Stilleben.
Milla Moilanen: Wanted (1998)
Wanted is based on the archival materials of the Uppsala Institute for racial biology (Uppsala University, Sweden). Today – in this very building – research into genetic manipulation is being conducted by dissecting DNA. Wanted animation deals with people’s classification based on outward appearance. The subject matter is indeed a timely one, nowadays masked behind the cover of technology as it is. Does modern genetic manipulation justify the previous century’s racial research? Wanted was one of the five nominees for the European Short Film Academy Award 1999.
Salla Tykkä: Zoo (2006)
A woman photographs zoo cages. The animals stare back, following her with their eyes. The voyeur and the object change places. The woman plunges into deep water where a game of violent underwater rugby is taking place. She returns to the surface to breathe, but the stares and the camera’s viewfinder block her escape route. In desperation, she makes an extreme decision.
IC-98: Arkhipelagos (Navigating the Tides of Time) (2013)
In the aftermath of a future catastrophe, survivors try to navigate where no geographical reference points remain, only time and weather reign. What remains is open water and rafts built from the debris – the remains of a sunken world. The rafts no longer navigate the treacherous waters of the archipelago – they are the archipelago, a loose community without roots. The rafts create temporary groups, gravitating towards each other only to part again, carried by the winds and currents.
New Moods of SAMULI ALAPURANEN’s DRAG ME TO KEMPELE
What does a film sound like when it is played? What happens to the image when there is another piece of music, or a third, or a fourth? These questions are answered with four different kinds of soundscapes made for Samuli Alapuranen’s short film Drag Me to Kempele by students of composing, music and media at the Tampere University of Applied Sciences. The work process had two basic starting points: a silent film (the participants had not heard the original soundtrack) and the soundscape of one instrument or a voice amplified with electronic aids. Each instrument is also distinctive: the flute, the mezzo soprano, the concert kantele and the cello all perform music alongside the film, one after another. All music is performed at the screening without advance recordings.
Moods of Drag Me to Kempele on Friday, March 9, at 16:00 in Pakkahuone.
Media art has a strong presence in the discussion and side programme
AV-arkki and Tampere Film Festival co-host on Saturday, March 10, a legendary brunch and screening at Klubi, with special guest Rosa Liksom. The screening consists of Liksom’s cult short films from the 1990s in addition to a more recent gem, The Big Boss (2017).
Patrik Söderlund from IC-98 attends with director, scriptwriter Selma Vilhunen and professor Frans Mäyrä a panel discussion moderated by the director of m-cult, Minna Tarkka, and a documentarist Jouko Aaltonen and organized by AVEK. The topic is the changing landscape of media art and audiovisual industries within the scope of 30 years from now. The discussion takes place on Saturday, March 10, at 14:00.
On Thursday, March 8 at 11:00, visual artist, film director Saara Ekström discusses with songwriter Yari the function and margins of film art in the dialogue moderated by Niilo Rinne and Kaisa Kukkola.
Visual artist, film director Mika Taanila attends with other Finnish documentarists a panel discussion around the new interview book by Harri Römpötti on Thursday, March 8, at 18:00.
This year’s FestArt exhibition in Mältinranta Art Centre presents Paseo de los Tristes by Minna Parkkinen. The exhibition deals with the sorrow caused by sudden loss and letting go. The exhibition is based on an experimental short film trilogy consisting of the films Dive, Grey and Circle. The light that shines through the celluloid is set in the concrete and gathered into the plexiglass, forming a frame for the films through which one can walk.
The 48th Tampere Film Festival, 7.–11.3.2018
More Information: Tampere Film Festival