
The 34th Minimalen Short Film Festival will be held from January 11–16 2022 in Trondheim, Norway. Four short films by our artists were selected for the Nordic Competition: Mika Taanila’s Failed Emptiness. Time (2021), Matti Harju’s El Centro (2021), Azar Saiyar’s Laila’s Apple (2021, in featured image), and Risto-Pekka Blom’s The Human Torch (2022).
Mika Taanila’s Failed Emptiness. Time will be screened in the Nordic Competition 1. Suddenly there is an enormous amount of time. At first everything is possible. Anything might happen. Gradually the possible becomes impossible.
Matti Harju’s El Centro will be screened in the Nordic Competition 2. Young Anon discovers the digital, binary root of everything during a school trip to New York and comes to a surprising conclusion. An associative and abstractly structured video about the boundaries of communication in the hinterland between analog and digital – a study at gaps between looking and understanding. The mixed form of the work reflects the current space of apparent intangibility and connection: How the past is encoded in the specific recording media and how it behaves after the radical equalization by the internet. The image, with its combination of an analog video signal with forms of compression, produces a kind of aesthetic that emphasizes nostalgia and alienation.

Azar Saiyar’s Laila’s Apple is included in the Nordic Competition 3. Composed of archive footage and interviews, Laila’s Apple is a video work about childhood, growing up, learning and rules.
Risto-Pekka Blom’s The Human Torch will be screened in the Nordic Competition 4. We have acted according to the demands of society. We have followed the rules. We do not mock or belittle people different from us. But it is not okay to come here to upset the status quo, provoking all kinds of jeering at the hot dog kiosk. The Human Torch is a one-shot short film about a traffic crossing at night, where respectable people are waiting for the light to change. The film is about losing your sense of security in a world that is changing uncontrollably.

The 34th Minimalen Short Film Festival, January 11–16 2022, Trondheim, Norway
More information: Minimalen SFF
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.