Azar Saiyar’s Solar Book (2024, in featured image) and Milja Viita & Veli Granö’s The King (2024) have been selected to compete at Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, held from October 13–20 in Paris, France. The King will be screened in the series Competition #1 and Solar Book in Competition #2.

Solar Book contemplates on what remains and what gets lost, when a thing becomes a museum object? Many details have gone missing, but the museum objects of Satakunta Museum bear a strong presence of waters running next to it: things that the river and the sea have carried, things that were born, that live and once lived because of them and beside them.

Azar Saiyar is a Helsinki-based filmmaker and visual artist. She often uses archive materials and plays with images and words of collective memory to look towards ways of looking, remembering and storytelling. Her films have been screened at international film and media art festivals, galleries, exhibitions, museums and broadcast on television.

The King is about a miraculous incident in Somero, Finland. Local musician Rauli Badding Somerjoki sent his song “Lights” to Elvis in 1975. He hoped an artist he admired would perform it. Badding’s song could have lifted Elvis’ career to a new height, even revolutionized the history of music. Badding believed and waited, but got no answer from the USA. Elvis passed two years later, in 1977. It is told that peculiar potatoes were found in a field in Somero the same fall.

Milja Viita‘s (b. 1974) installations and films consist of experimental and documentary elements. Her works have been exhibited in e.g. Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Kunsthalle Helsinki, Mänttä Art Festival and in film and media art festivals internationally. Milja Viita lives and works in Porvoo, Finland. She graduated with MFA degree in Time and Space Arts from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2005.

Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, October 13–20 2024, Paris, France.

More information: Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris

AV-arkki has promoted and distributed Finnish media art since 1989. AV-arkki’s promotional efforts have made the artists’ participation in this event possible. If you want to hear the latest news from our distribution, subscribe to our newsletter!