Sami van Ingen’s Flame (2018) is screened at the International Short Film and Animation Festival PÖFF Shorts, held in Tallinn from November 20–28. Flame is included in the programme “Rebels With a Cause“, screened on Friday, November 23, at 20:30, and on Monday, November 26, at 21:30.

Flame is a fractured melodrama, based on damaged frames from the last minutes of the only remaining nitrate reel of the lost feature film Silja – Fallen Asleep When Young (1937) directed by Teuvo Tulio. All screening prints and the negative of the film were destroyed in a 1959 studio fire. A sequence from the middle of the film was found at La Cinémathèque Française in Paris in 2015.

Sami van Ingen is a veteran in alternative Finnish film, who has worked as an artist, lecturer and curator since the late 1980s. He lives and works in Helsinki. Van Ingen finished his doctoral studies in the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2012. He often uses random or found materials in his works. His works have been seen in many national and international exhibitions and festivals over the years, including Tbilisi Triennial (2012), Kunsthalle Helsinki (2005) and Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland (2002).

International Short Film and Animation Festival PÖFF Shorts, November 20–28 2018, Tallinn, Estonia

More information: PÖFF Shorts