Mox Mäkelä’s Thinking About That (2023) was awarded with ZONTA Prize at the 69. International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, held from April 26 – May 1 2023 in Germany. The ZONTA prize, worth 1000 € is distributed for a female filmmaker in the International or German Competition. The jury states: “Few plants were trampled in the production of this film. An oral, gutturally spoken waterfall of words that even in the original Finnish – let alone in the English subtitled version – works with absolute overload, with word inventions and leaps of thought: a rant on a world of commercial slime hooks. The film also exceeds all expectations on the visual level.”

Mox Mäkelä’s Thinking About That is a satirical, collage-like monologue. 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.

Mox Mäkelä (b. 1958) is a conceptual artist active since 1978. Mäkelä’s art has been shown widely in different venues and contexts, e.g. in the Maritime museum of Finland and at international film and art festivals. In her ecocritical films and installations, Mäkelä examines the clash between nature and human nature within the marine milieu. Another part of her oeuvre is “idiot ibidem”, a long-term extended project that studies a literary historical chain of events with full methodological freedom and diversity.

69. International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, April 26 – May 1 2023, Germany
More information: ISFF Oberhausen

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.