The third DVD publication under AV-arkki’s VIEW label is a retropective of Anssi Kasitonni‘s media art works.
Anssi Kasitonni: Lobster Love From The Deep is published in collaboration with the Ars Fennica Foudation.
VIEW-3 will be launched on 9.11.2011 @ Helsinki Short Film Festival, with a special retrospective screening of Kasitonni’s works.
VIEW-3 is available for purchase in AV-arkki’s online store after the Helsinki Short Film Festival premier. Anssi Kasitonni is the 2011 winner of the Ars Fennica award. A retrospective exhibition of his works will be open at the Amos Anderson Art Museum during 18.11.2011–30.1.2012.
VIEW-3 is supported by The Ministry of Education and Culture and FRAME.
VIEW publications are intended for private home viewing only. Anssi Kasitonni’s media art works are available for public venues, exhibitions and screenings via AV-arkki’s distribution programme. Contact distribution manager Vesa Puhakka, in case you want to rent screening copies and screening rights for a public presentation.
Anssi Kasitonni (born 1978) is a unique artist, musician, filmmaker and a man in love with his work and craft, as well as with life itself. He is a skateboarder and an award-winning artist from Sahalahti, Finland. He has worked in music, drawing and sculpture, but to many of his fans, the most beloved of his works are the short films he makes at his own farm. The films deal with age-old questions related to morality, love, death, generation gaps, sexuality and, of course, submarines. The ideas are epic, the films decidedly homespun. It’s a killer combination.
This is a collection Kasitonni’s short films from to 2001 to 2011, from the Crayfish Sea of Love, a wild amalgamation of road movie, skate flick and disco exploitation, to Planet of Sexes, the first ever sci-fi epic filmed in “kasiscope minimax” with its aspect ratio of 2.66:1. It’s ALMOST Cinemascope. Anssi’s films star all manner of creatures great and small: the artist himself, his wife Maria, one of Aki Kaurismäki’s favorite actors Markku Peltola and a pair of stuffed squirrels, one of whom has an eyepatch.
Anssi’s movies are a world unto themselves that tells us something essential about ours.
Read more, articles from the DVD booklet:
Ville Pirinen: In the heart of the process
Branislava Andjelković: Ars Fennica Award for 2011
Anssi Kasitonni’s works in AV-arkki’s online archive
VIEW-3 DVD publication includes the following works by Anssi Kasitonni:
Lobster Love From The Deep (2001)
Many of the unique aspects familiar from Kasitonni’s later movies are already present in his first 8mm film. The technical innovations in the stage sets, cinematography and editing define the rhythm of the strange story. This perplexing combination of road, disco and skate movie deals with the essential unpredictability of life. An enthusiasm for the craft of filmmaking is obvious.
A story of crime and conscience, this movie takes place on at least two different levels. Animation and live action, bucolic vistas combined with space age equipment, perspectives and narrative methods are methodically interlaced. There has never been a finer scene where the plan to rob a bank is explained by using mashed potatoes and sausages. Combining different worlds and event scales has, since this movie, been a hallmark of the Kasitonni style of filmmaking. The same with making musical interludes a part of the plot.
A young squirrel into rock’n’roll, American cars and skateboarding is unable to carry on the time-honored traditions of his family and dressing up as a flying squirrel to protect the home woods. As far as the narrative pace and rhythm go, this is Kasitonni’s most clearly traditional story. It bangs its message into the viewer’s brain with an irresistible force. The movie features extra special equipment, a musical interlude, animation, a real car and switching perspectives. It’s easy to interpret Gliders as an autobiographical story written by the offspring of an entrepreneurial family who became an artist.
This submarine movie that combines sci-fi with love story goes from under the sea to up in the air and onto dry land with an eccentric dramatic logic. The plot turns are unexpected, but obey their own inexorable logic. An unexplained menace shadows a love story conveyed in the midst of specialized technical equipment, blinking lights, various computer monitors and minor laser battle. Unusually, The Investigators stars a real professional actor, the deceased polymath genius Markku Peltola. For his role, Peltola wanted to be paid in bale stakes. His wish was fulfilled.
This prison break story combines animation, puppetry and live action. The parallel worlds and scales collide as Masa, a guinea pig yearning for freedom, and his owner go about implementing their own plans. In his nest, the technologically surprisingly advanced and creative pet plots his convoluted getaway plans, which always run into the impenetrable wall of his owner’s love. This movie features electric gadgets, bodybuilding, Steve McQueen and surprisingly long monologues spoken in guinea pig language.
Planet of Sexes (2011)
Planet of sexes is probably the first movie in the world to be filmed in almost-Cinemascope on 8mm film. The aspect ratio is 2.66:1, i.e. kasiscope mini-max. An unexpected love awaits a lonely US Air Force pilot on the planet of female warriors, castration robots and lizard creatures. The action switches from the blackness of space to the surface of the desert planet and into fortresses under its surface with blinding. Sweeping intergalactic vistas are interlaced with tight close ups of the actors’ faces.
Extras
Kasitonni’s music videos and director’s audio commentary to the films, together with artist Ville Pirinen.
