The 36th edition of Minimalen Short Film Festival is held from January 23–28, 2024 in Trondheim, Norway. The festival’s programme includes Azar Saiyar’s Solar Book (2023, in featured image), Maija Blåfield’s Scenic View (2023) and Hanna Hovitie’s Square the Circle (2023).
Azar Saiyar’s Solar Book is screened in the Nordic and Norwegian Competition 6 on Friday, January 26. Solar Book asks: What remains and what gets lost, when a thing becomes a museum object? Many details have gone missing, but the museum objects of Satakunta Museum bear a strong presence of waters running next to it: things that the river and the sea have carried, things that were born, that live and once lived because of them and beside them.
Azar Saiyar is a Helsinki-based filmmaker and visual artist. She often uses archive materials and plays with images and words of collective memory to look towards ways of looking, remembering and storytelling.
Scenic View competes in the Nordic and Norwegian Competition 3 on Thursday, January 25. Finland has the most forest in Europe, but primeval forest has become so rare that it feels fictional. Is it now the enchanted forest? Is a commercial forest real? As nature documentaries are staged, are they fiction? Scenic View is a film about how we look at a forest landscape and the reality.
Maija Blåfield (b. 1973) is a multidisciplinary contemporary artist and film director. Her cinematic works navigate the grounds between experimental film and documentary film. Blåfield’s works typically address the ambiguity of reality, experiencing our everyday life differently, and the human relationship with the environment.
Hanna Hovitie’s Square the Circle is screened in the Nordic and Norwegian Competition 3 on Wednesday, January 24. Square the Circle ponders: How to be a circle in a square world? In a two-dimensional space, out of time, a person seeks their belonging to the world through a journey to infinity.
Hanna Hovitie is a film director and video artist from Helsinki, Finland. Her films have been shown and awarded at several prominent international festivals such as DOK Leipzig, Melbourne International Film Festival, Sheffield DocFest, and International Film Festival Rotterdam.
Minimalen Short Film Festival, January 23–28 2024, Trondheim, Norway
More information: Minimalen SSF
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!