Anssi Kasitonni’s Sakke (2018), Johanna Lecklin’s Not Just a Matter of Passion (2019), Azar Saiyar’s Monument of Distance (2018), and Pilvi Takala’s The Stroker (2019) were selected for the international competition of the 65th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, held from May 1–6. Oberhausen Short Film Festival is one of the oldest short film festivals in the world. This year, the festival received over 7000 submissions from 127 countries.
The 65th ISFF Oberhausen marks also the second edition of Conditional Cinema, a special programme curated by Mika Taanila. This year’s programme includes the Finnish-German artist collective Speech Karaoke Action Group who invite audiences to participate in a real-time collage of speeches about cinema and to choose – and perform – their favourite “film speech” from avast pool, just like a favourite song in a traditional karaoke event.
AV-arkki’s programme coordinator Tytti Rantanen will present AV-arkki’s distributor screening and attend the meetings of DINAMO – Distribution Network of Artists’ Moving Image Organizations.
AV-arkki’s distributor screening includes following short films:
Risto-Pekka Blom: Interceptor (2018)
Risto-Pekka Blom: Interceptor (2018, 04:32)
In 1989, an unknown person halted the column of armored troops at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. On the previous day, a demonstration that originated as a student protest, was violently suppressed by the army. In democracies, the use of brutal force has been replaced by structural violence, where the power is centered around a small economical elite pursuing their own interests. The main purpose of the political system is to maintain these power structures.
Maarit Suomi-Väänänen: Minispectacles Squatting (2018, 11:00)
Minispectacles Squatting portrays living at the squat in Zürich. Minispectacles is a series of one minute works, cinematic haikus. To be continued all the way to Part 100. Woman with a pocket camera.
Jaakko Pallasvuo: Heterosexual Love Story (2018, 08:12)
The filmmaker tiredly narrates a stereotypical, imagined encounter between a man and woman, abroad two different ships passing each other in the night.
Tuomas A. Laitinen: Dossier of Tentacular (2018, 10:45)
Dossier of Tentacular is a knotty and tragicomic organism that explores the techniques behind information production and dissemination, as well as ecological change and issues related to neoliberal language. The visual form of the work is reminiscent of a notebook whose pages become filled with pictures, diagrams and notes. The texts explore different ways to use language: one mode is like an expository lecture, while the other consists of poetic expressions created by an artificial intelligence that was whose source material is the collected works of Samuel Beckett. Based on keywords and triggers associated with the theme of the video, the algorithm generates absurd and laborious poetry. These elements combine in a chaotic way in the video, creating overlapping metafictive layers.
Minna Rainio & Mark Roberts: They Came in Crowded Boats and Trains (2018, 19:48)
Refugees from Finland and Iraq struggle across geographical and temporal borders on a journey to find safety. The film interweaves the stories of Finnish refugees during the World War II with the journeys of refugees from Iraq who travelled to Finland in the present day. The division between us and them, the past and the present, becomes blurred.
Elina Oikari: Govadas (2018, 08:43)
Govadas explores the contradiction and harmony between humans and nature through Sámi poetry. The cyclical perception of time among the only indigenous people living in the European Union is presented in the work as unfolding forms and layers based on the archive material from the 1940’s and the super 8 mm film footage from 2010’s. Govadas creates a kinetic meditation on time, memory, landscape and the ruptures between them.
Elli Vuorinen: Still Lives (2019, 06:02)
The concept of busy stillness is explored from various standpoints as museum artefacts from all around the world reflect on the mundane challenges of modern life.
FOUR FINNISH SHORT FILMS IN THE INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION OF ISFF OBERHAUSEN
Johanna Lecklin: Not Just a Matter of Passion (2018)
Anssi Kasitonni’s latest short film Sakke introduces his new innovation, the first rc-snowboarder in the world. Sakke is going to make a film about himself with his friend.
Johanna Lecklin’s Not Just a Matter of Passion comprises two parallel narratives. One shows two young girls discussing the Finnish Civil War as they play a board game based on the 1918 conflict between the Reds and the Whites. In the other, a researcher is listening to an archive interview and viewing photographs taken at the time of the Civil War. Her work focuses on the fates of women and children on the red side of the conflict, the division that split Finnish society in two and the process by which each side attempted to dehumanise the other. The events are set in the present day, with some scenes shot on location in Mänttä-Vilppula, a site of the Civil War front line.
In Azar Saiyar’s Monument of Distance, Googoosh, a popular and loved iranian-azerbaijani singer, performs a version of the song Ayrılıq – Separation. The performance is from 1970s television show and it has been copied several times from one videotape to another. Ayrılıq could be a love song but it is told that composer Ali Salimi (who had migrated from Soviet Azerbaijan to Iran and left behind his home and loved ones) wanted to make music about his sense of longing.
The Stroker is based on Pilvi Takala’s two week-long intervention at Second Home, a trendy East London coworking space for young entrepreneurs and startups. During the intervention Takala posed as a wellness consultant named Nina Nieminen, the founder of cutting-edge company Personnel Touch who were allegedly employed by Second Home to provide touching services in the workplace.
This year, Salla Tykkä is one of the jurors of the international competition.
The 65th ISFF Oberhausen, May 1–6 2019, Germany
More information: ISFF Oberhausen