
Jonna Kina’s Arr. for a Scene (2017) and Marja Helander’s Birds in the Earth (2018) are screened at the traditional Finnish Film Days, organized by FinnAgora and held in Toldi film theater, Budapest, from February 6–10. Kina’s and Helander’s short films are included in the screening of awarded Finnish short films on Sunday, February 10, at 16:00.
Awarded as the Best Nordic Short Film at Nordisk Panorama 2017, 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. The original film scene will remain invisible while the viewer sees only the foley artists creating sound effects for the scene, such as footsteps, shower and door closing. During the performance, the foley artists are looking straight at the camera. The film inverts the position of the screen and the gaze of the viewer. The viewer becomes part of the scene. The film examines the way sounds are constructed for the use of cinema and what happens when the structures of a film are dismantled into parts.
Jonna Kina (b. 1984, Lappeenranta, Finland) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with photography, video, sound and text. She has studied in Helsinki, New York and Jerusalem. Kina’s works have been presented in numerous exhibitions such as Museo Amparo, Puebla (2016), Gallery AMA, Helsinki (2016), Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago (2016), Kunsthalle, Helsinki (2016), Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2015), Finnish Museum of Photography (2015), Finnish Institute, Stockholm (2014), Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid (2014) and Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg (2014). In 2013 she received a special mention from the jury of Photo Levallois Award and was nominated by the by Hasselblad Foundation’s Victor Fellowship Award and in 2014 by the Source Cord Prize.
Birds in the Earth is a short film based on dance. The main characters are two young Sámi ballet students; Birit and Katja Haarla. The film tells a bit melancholic story through their dance performances. At the same time it examines the deeper questions of the ownership of Sámi land. The film has been awarded as the best short fiction film at Northern Character Film & TV Festival, Murmansk and as the best experimental work at ImagineNative Film + Media Arts Festival, Toronto. The film won both the Main Prize of the national short film competition and the Risto Jarva Prize at Tampere Film Festival.
Marja Helander (b.1965) is a Finnish photographic and video artist. She graduated from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 1999. Her earlier work explored her own identity between the Finnish and the Sámi culture. Helander’s recent photographic work has focused on Northern landscape. The accent of the work is on the postcolonial topics in the Sámi area, focusing particularly on the global mining industry. The encounter between nature and mankind is not harmonious, but destructive. On the other hand, her video works are playful, exploring the contradiction between the traditional Sámi way of life and the modern society. Marja Helander has participated in solo and group exhibitions and her works have been acquired for various public collections in Finland and abroad.
The 8th Finnish Film Days (Finn Filmnapok), February 6–10 2019, Budapest, Hungary
More information: FinnAgora