Jan Ijäs’s Two Wars (2024, in featured image) and Elli Vuorinen’s Flower Show (2024) were selected for competitive programmes of IndieLisboa film festival, held from 23 May to 2 June 2024 in Lisboa, Portugal.
Two Wars will be screened in the Silvestre Competition. Two Wars is a work of thought, imagination, presentation and narrative divided across two chapters, World War I and World War II. The first chapter is set in Monte Cassino in Central Italy and the second ten kilometres to the south in the village of San Pietro Infine. In 2023, Ijäs’s previous film House of the Wickedest Man in the World was awarded as the best short film in the Silvestre competition.
Media artist and film director Jan Ijäs (b. 1975) studied documentary film making at the Department of Film, Television and Scenography at the Aalto University in Helsinki. His work can be described as a blend of avant garde, experimental media art and documentary film making. His films have been screened at more than 200 Finnish and international film festivals and as installations in museums and art galleries. He has won numerous awards, including the Finnish Risto Jarva Prize in 2011 for SWEET MOV(I)E, Raft of the Médusa, film about immigration won Amnesty International Award 2018 at the IndieLisboa film festival in Portugal.
Screened in the international competition, Flower Show toys with a metaphor for the female condition that presents women as cultivated flowers that are expected to maintain a pre-established system. Until the seed of something can shake up the status quo.
Elli Vuorinen is an animation artist who lives and works in rural Finland. Her works often balance between surreal, delightful and disgusting. Although her approach is often humoristic the films deal with significant themes of melancholy, solitude and hope. Vuorinen’s style is versatile – blending of minimal and handcrafted, she creates works that are playful and bold. Different animation techniques inspire her work. Vuorinen’s farm studio allows her to work with everything between large scale stop motion to 2D computer animation.
IndieLisboa, 23 May to 2 June 2024, Portugal
More information: IndieLisboa
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!