Internationales Frauen Film Fest Dortmund + Köln presents a showcase from AV-arkki’s archive, titled “Die Teile des Ganzen” (“Parts of the Whole”). The festival will be held from March 29 to April 3 2022 in Cologne, Germany.
Curated by Vivien Buchhorn, the screening takes place on Saturday, April 2, at 12:00 in Filmhaus Köln. The screening includes following titles:
Azar Saiyar: Laila’s Apple (2021, 08:00)
Composed of archive footage and interviews, Laila’s Apple is a video work about childhood, growing up, learning and rules.
Azar Saiyar: History Bleeds Under Your Fingernails (2016, 07:00, in featured image)
We used to believe that being left-handed could lead to criminality, stupidity, and immoral behaviour. So we tried to educate our children not to use that hand. History Bleeds Under Your Fingernails is a short film on the history of taming the left hand and on the culture of cultivating the bodies that do not fit.
Jenni Toikka: Prelude Op. 28 No. 2 (2022, 08:00)
During a single long shot, we see two people taking turns playing the piano and listening alternately. The piece is the same on both times – Prelude Op. 28 No. 2 by Chopin – but when the performer changes, the interpretation of the song changes along with the perspective from which the song and its performance are viewed. The uninterrupted playing and single shot capture the event in one temporal moment, but as the camera moves and two people change places, time is equally layered. The performer becomes the listener and the listener becomes the performer.
Elian Mikkola: Via Karelia (2021, 13:00)
Tracing back a lost identity, hidden in the forests of an abandoned war zone. How does trauma get carried on from a generation to another and is there a way to stop the cycle? The filmmaker tries to understand how to heal from the pressures of the past by searching for their grandmother’s childhood home. Taking the journey with their parents, they find themselves in a village located in the old Karelia, now a part of Russia.
Leena Pukki: The Time of a Slime Mold (2021, 10:00)
The movement of slime mold is combined with pattern subjects selected from Karelian thread blankets. Slime molds are primitive Amoebozoa organisms that can move even they do not have a brain or nervous system. The poem heard in the background expresses themes of time, circulation and decomposing.
The showcase is presented by AV-arkki’s programme coordinator Tytti Rantanen, who will also attend the panel discussion “Facing Virtual Realities” with filmmaker Niu Xiaoyu, film producer Jana Cisar, director and set designer Marcus Lobbes, and Linnea Semmerling, director of Inter Media Art Institute (IMAI). The panel takes a look at how festivals are changing, with them increasingly now presenting new digital formats.
In addition, Heidi Tikka’s On the Threshold of Liberty (1991) will be screened in the programme “Films that heal curators“, on April 1 at 17:30 in Filmforum NRW. The film examines the experience of a breakdown of one’s own language. It is a record of personal struggle in trying to construct meaning as an outsider in a foreign culture. Tikka’s short film was selected to the programme by curator Maxa Zoller.
Internationales Frauen Film Fest Dortmund + Köln, March 29 – April 3 2022, Cologne, Germany
More information: IFFF Dortmund + Köln
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.