Risto-Pekka Blom’s Interceptor (2018) and Jan Ijäs’s Waste no. 3 Boom (2017) were selected for the international competition of dokumentART film festival, held from October 17–21 in Neubrandenburg. Both films are screened on Friday, October 19; Blom’s in the Competition Programme 5, at 14:00, and Ijäs’s in the Competition Programme 6, at 17:00.
Risto-Pekka Blom’s Interceptor is a short film alluding to a historical event. 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 In democracies, the use of brutal force has been replaced by structural violence, where the power is centered around a small economical elite pursuing their own interests.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.
Risto-Pekka Blom‘s video art and experimental short films have been exhibited in festivals and events in over twenty countries. His film Theme Park (2015) has won the Main Prize at Tampere Film Festival and Helsinki Short Film Festival in 2015.
Waste no. 3 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. During a weeklong camp a total of 1.2 million kg of explosives are destroyed. The explosion safety area is seven kilometres. The explosion produces a mushroom cloud that reaches up to the lowers clouds and creates a crater about ten metres deep and thirty metres across.
Media artist and filmmaker Jan Ijäs lives and works in Helsinki, Finland. Ijäs works with documentary, fiction and alternative film. The films of Ijäs deal with serious and difficult social themes, like migration into foreign and hostile societies. Ijäs’s films have been shown very widely abroad by over a hundred film festivals and as installations in museums and galleries.
dokumentART, October 17–21 2018, Neubrandenburg, Germany
More information: dokumentART