The 67. International Short Film Festival Oberhausen will be held from May 1–10 online. This year, Finnish media art has a strong presence in different programme sections. Marja Helander’s Shelter (2020) was selected for the new international online competition. The festival presents a retrospective Profile programme of Salla Tykkä, and Mika Taanila’s Conditional Cinema continues with an online screening. In addition, AV-arkki has composed a showcase of recent titles in our distribution. All these screenings will be available for 48 hours.
Marja Helander’s Shelter (Suodji) is an adaptation of an old story from Utsjoki, Sápmi, to the present. It is a legend of the director’s relative, Ovllá-Ivvár Helander, and about what he did during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918 in Utsjoki. Ovllá-Ivvár decided to fool Death and take his fate into his own hands. Today we are facing a similar threat in the form of coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic. The protagonist of the film is walking in Ovllá-Ivvár’s footsteps. But at the end, who is really who? Suodji will be available in the International Online Competition 2 from May 1.
Profile: Salla Tykkä
Salla Tykkä joins the continuum of Eija-Liisa Ahtila (2000), Ilppo Pohjola (2012), and Erkka Nissinen (2015) with her two-part Profile programme. The Finnish photographer and video artist Salla Tykkä first gained international attention with a trilogy in which she transformed male movie genres into female stories of awakening. Lasso (2000), in which she dissects the Western genre, was selected for the 2002 International Competition in Oberhausen. Tykkä looks back on numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the 2001 Venice Biennale. Oberhausen has frequently shown her works since then and is now presenting an overview of the works of an artist who expands autobiographical references in her works into analyses of the relationships between male and female characters, between sexuality and emotion.
Screening Salla Tykkä 1 will be available from May 8, including films Giant (2014), Retrospective (2016), Europe (2021), and Lasso (2000). Screening Salla Tykkä 2, including a feature-length documentary film Untitled (White – Alps) (2019) and a short film 24.12.1997 (2016) will be available from May 9.
Conditional Cinema
Curated by Mika Taanila, Conditional Cinema was initially supposed to be an organic three-year cycle of conceptual film programs from 2018 to 2020. Last year the pandemic made the festival delay the third part for year. Now in the current ever-so-unstable situation the festival presents a thematic interim report dealing with the concept of absence.
The streaming experiment celebrates the absent sector with films on nothing at all, on the absent humans, on clay sculptures, non-places and ghosts. The screening includes the premiere of Manuela de Laborde’s Ficciones, an evolving process that has been the core of the Conditional Cinema cycle from its beginning in 2018. Other films include, among others, Jonna Kina’s Akiya (2020) and Mika Taanila’s Failed Emptiness. Time (2021), a new collaboration with poet Harry Salmenniemi.
The Conditional Cinema cycle will be completed in May 2022, back in safe physical cinema conditions. This year’s online screening will be available from May 8.
Catch up with our recent titles in AV-arkki’s distributors’ screening
This year, AV-arkki presents an online distributors’ screening consisting of seven recent titles in our distribution. The screening is available from May 7 and includes the following short films and videos:
- Liinu Grönlund & Okku Nuutilainen: Observe These Words (2021, 07:24)
- Hannu Karjalainen: Daemon (2020, 11:53)
- Timo Bredenberg: Liquidity (2020, 08:40)
- Yassine Khaled: Monitor Man in the Time of Pandemic (2021, 18:23)
- Jenni Toikka: Reel (2019, 07:32)
- Eeva-Mari Haikala: Eeva-Mari’s cries etc. (2020, 12:22)
- Nastja Säde Rönkkö: ICELAND (nighttime) (2019, 06:18)
In addition, Milja Viita’s When We Are Nothing Left (2020) is included in a joint distributors’ screening by Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre & Vtape, available from May 8, whereas Jonna Kina’s Akiya can be seen in Arsenal’s distributors’ screening, available from May 9. Both titles are also in AV-arkki’s distribution.
AV-arkki will be present in Meet the Distributors online get-together on May 8.
The 67. International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, May 1–10 2021, online
More information: ISFF Oberhausen