Three short films, Jan Ijäs’s Social Connection (2016), Jonna Kina’s Arr. for a Scene (2017) and Mika Taanila’s The World (2017), have been selected for the Best Nordic Short Film Competition of Nordisk Panorama through AV-arkki’s distribution. Founded in 1990, Nordisk Panorama is an annual film festival for short and documentary films by filmmakers from the Nordic countries. The festival will be held in Malmö, Sweden, from September 21–26.
Jan Ijäs’s Social Connection has been previously screened in the international competition of Ciné de Huesca Film Festival, Spain.
The film’s dialogue has been copied from online forums as is, with no editing. Many times these “faceless” online conversations end up to a very surreal limbo.
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.
Jonna Kina’s Arr. for a Scene will have its world premiere at Nordisk Panorama.
Arr. for a Scene is a documentary of two foley artists while they are producing sounds for one of the most famous film scene in the film history (the shower scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, 1960). This performance is documented on 35 mm film. The original film scene will remain invisible while the viewer sees only the foley artists creating sound effects for the scene, such as footsteps, shower and door closing. During the performance, the foley artists are looking straight at the camera. The film inverts the position of the screen and the gaze of the viewer. The viewer becomes part of the scene. The film examines the way sounds are constructed for the use of cinema and what happens when the structures of a film are dismantled into parts.
Jonna Kina (b. 1984, Lappeenranta, Finland) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with photography, video, sound and text. She has studied in Helsinki, New York and Jerusalem. Kina’s works have been presented in numerous exhibitions such as Museo Amparo, Puebla (2016), Gallery AMA, Helsinki (2016), Catherine Edelman Gallery, Chicago (2016), Kunsthalle, Helsinki (2016), Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne (2015), Finnish Museum of Photography (2015), Finnish Institute, Stockholm (2014), Sala Alcalá 31, Madrid (2014) and Hasselblad Foundation, Gothenburg (2014). In 2013 she received a special mention from the jury of Photo Levallois Award and was nominated by the by Hasselblad Foundation’s Victor Fellowship Award and in 2014 by the Source Cord Prize.
Mika Taanila’s The World (2017), premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam and has been previously screened e.g. at CPH:DOX and Flatpack Festival, UK.
The images of The World consist of The Man Who Fell to Earth (dir. Nicolas Roeg 1976) evacuated and flipped. In abandoned landscapes, animals, furniture and empty vehicles are left awaiting for disaster. ”We must have died alone, a long long time ago.” (D.B.)
Mika Taanila (s. 1965) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Helsinki, Finland. He works with documentaries, experimental film and visual arts. Human engineering, utopias, failures and man-machines are recurring themes in his films and installations. Taanila’s works have been shown at major international group shows, such as Venice Biennale (Nordic Pavilion 2017), Aichi Triennale (2013), dOCUMENTA (2012), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Berlin Biennale (2004), Manifesta (2002) and Istanbul Biennial (2001). Solo shows include the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki (2013–14), Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2013), TENT, Rotterdam (2013) and Galleria Heino, Helsinki (2010). Taanila’s short films have been screened altogether at more than 300 international film festivals and special events. In 2015, Taanila was awarded with the prestigious Ars Fennica Award, the biggest Finnish art award.
Nordisk Panorama, Malmö, Sweden, September 21–26, 2017
More information: Nordisk Panorama