Jan Ijäs’s and Samuli Alapuranen’s short films screened at kurz.film.spiele, Konstanz

Jan Ijäs’s Social Connection (2016) and Samuli Alapuranen’s Drag Me to Kempele (2017) were screened at kurz.film.spiele short film festival, held in Konstanz from October 21–22.

The dialogue of Social Connection has been copied from online forums as is, with no editing. Many times these “faceless” online conversations end up to a very surreal limbo. The film has been previously screened e.g. in the short film competition of Nordisk Panorama, Sweden.

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.

Ijäs: Social Connection (2016)

 

Drag Me to Kempele has been previously screened at Minimalen Short Film Festival, Norway. Kempele is a grey hole located in the northern part of Finnish Ostrobothnia. It neither pulls in or pushes away the flow of traffic that trickles through it via the E4 motorway. It is ordinary. It is flat. It is very difficult to come up with any more adjectives describing it. Drag Me to Kempele is a portrait of a mediocre town where people shop, exercise or drive through on their way to North or South. You can visit Kempele at 64.9129° N 25.5035° E.

Samuli Alapuranen is a media artist born in Kempele, Northern Finland, and based in Helsinki. Alapuranen graduated from Tampere School of Art and Communication in 1998 and works as a film maker, graphic designer, musician and VJ.


Kurz.film.spiele, Konstanz, Germany, 21.–22.10.2017

More information: kurz.film.spiele


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.