Featured image from Jussi Eerola: Grasshopper (2023)

Discover AV-arkki’s latest acquisitions for our online archive below. For professional preview, please register to see the full-length versions.

Jussi Eerola: Grasshopper (2023, 08:57)

Night falls down on empty business premises – and lights go up! A minimalistic musical.

Henna-Riikka Halonen: Tissue (2022, 10:17)

In this film, series of long takes guide us from a fictional prosthetic factory through the nostril, skin and tissue to the nervous system and into the cell. The modified 3D model of an animal cell becomes a strange world inhabited by different living and non-living organisms. Here, we see the body simultaneously as a self-contained and porous multi-species organism and a site of conflict. 

Matti Harju: Ecstasy (2023, 09:48)

Set in the darkest time of the year, a feverish and delirious film about a small and ever-shrinking island – the Ecstasy – located somewhere between the search for pleasure and the inherently destructive powers of capitalism.

Joonas Hyvönen: Escape Character (2022, 35:07)

It’s 2042 and the so-called first contact has taken place. A crisis ensues after a message is sent without an emoji marking its sarcastic tone. The foreign civilization departs but leaves humanity with a new form of communication. Escape Character is an animated film following four characters trying to find their way in the newly reshaped landscape.

Artor Jesus Inkerö: Jab (2020, 07:53)

A person is doing movements that imitate a boxing match. In a dialogue, two persons are wondering about how the person looks in the space and how they are. On top of that, they give guidance to the boxer. The wounds in the video are artificial, created by a make-up artist to resemble wounds from a fight. In the background, we can hear a weird ringing sound and the camera focusing.

Appu Jasu: Drift (2022, 02:41)

An encounter in the woods sends a squirrel on an inner journey. No animals were harmed in the making of this film.

Ninni Korkalo: The Best Lover (2023, 13:17)

The Best Lover is a short film about loving yourself. It plays with the myths of love in pursuit of the revolutionary power of self-love. Feminist humour bubbles and confuses, as artificial intelligence mines the definition of the best lover, and the retired Queen of the Galaxy addresses the inhabitants of Earth. As in a love scene, the image focuses on sunsets and waterfalls, shifting the act of love towards nature. The most important thing is to swear an oath of love – naturally to yourself.

Mox Mäkelä: Thinking about that (2023, 20:48)

What does she explain? Does she speak for herself? Her coat is poplin and its neckerchief is yellow like a canary. Whether she bumped into something when she came from the paradise of market, no one knows, but a group of torsos knows based on their own history that such a thing happens.

Arttu Nieminen: Lift Up Your Voices (2023, 11:30)

Voice from the nonplace of an all-embracing algorithm addresses humanity in its last gasps. Punctuated by a song based on a stanza from Emily Dickinson’s poem “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain”, the Voice invites us to break bread and pray together, and to face the deadly consequences of our human desires. Finally, the Voice implores us to lift up our own voices against the hell of misbelieving.

Minna Parkkinen: Petrified (2023, 09:54)

The short film Petrified is about a child’s experience of sexual abuse and the slow recovery from it. The film shows the child’s trust which the adult exploits. The child, unable to verbalize the event and the resultant traumatic symptoms, instead internalises the guilt and the shame of the adult’s action. The subsequent emotions, bodily reactions, and eventual survival and healing without dialogue, using symbolic images and sound design. 

Nastja Säde Rönkkö: Those Who Kept the Light / Seaweed (2022, 08:32)

Those Who Kept the Light is a series of videos exploring our dependent relationship with the sea, in a context of queer and feminist maritime narratives. The narratives are told through the context of human and other-than-human love stories; the wind or the ocean are seen as entities with consciousness, emotions and a voice. Those Who Kept the Light investigates the importance of vulnerability, desire and memory through myths and open-ended narratives. Within the wider framework of climate emergency and the role of the fragile ecosystems of the ocean, the project explores the collective mindset of imagination and longing. Unfolding epic and barren Nordic landscapes, the narrator leads the viewer into spaces and places of solace, empowerment and emotion. Those Who Kept the Light is a 10-screen film installation with site-specific sculptures. The project is based on ten poetic scripts that Nastja Säde Rönkkö wrote while she was traveling in Denmark and Norway in 2020–2021. The work can be shown as an installation or as a single-screen version.

Paula Saraste: Let us Stay for a While (2022, 30:37)

Let us Stay for a While is a story about a weekend on a remote island. The protagonists witness a mystical airplane accident and rescue one of the survivors to the island. Inexplicable things start to happen, the protagonists are thrown back to an altered mood and the island doesn’t seem to want them to leave.

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!