Filmmaker and visual artist Mika Taanila plays a prominent year at this year’s Nordisk Panorama and its Finnish focus. 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.
Narrative Tremor in Malmö Konsthall
Salla Tykkä: Giant (2014)
Mika Taanila has compiled this years Nordisk Panorama collaboration with Malmö Konsthall. The exhibition “Narrative Tremor” looks at the short but rich tradition of experimental film and video art in Finland. The exhibition is open daily from September 9–30. The works range from historical celluloid landmarks to analogue video art, and finally to more recent digital gems. The focus here is on cinematic concept, structural approach and sound, rather than on obsessive storytelling. Mika Taanila will discuss the programme with curator and director of Malmö Konsthall, Mats Stjernstedt, on Saturday, September 23 at 13:00–13.30.
The exhibition features the following works from AV-arkki’s distribution:
Pasi “Sleeping” Myllymäki: Horizontal (1979, 03:37)
A formalist experimentation based on the visual idea of the stave: a folded sheet of paper changes its tone with the alteration of light and sound.
Denise Ziegler: The Things You Have in Your Pocket (1992, 03:48)
Three videopoems about the objects people carry in their pockets.
Juha van Ingen: (Dis)Integrator (1992, 04:13)
In (Dis)Intergrator a sequence from Kurt Neumann´s ‘The Fly’, made in 1958, is copied with a VHS recorder. Then the copy is copied again. This process is repeated until the video signal disintegrates into noise and finally disappears into darkness.
Salla Tykkä: Giant (2014, 12:47)
Giant was filmed at the famous, Romanian, Communist-era gymnastics schools of Onesti and Deva where people still train fanatically. Top young gymnasts talk about their love of the sport, their fears and dreams. The combination with archival material from the 1970s onwards reveals links between the photogenic sport and the severe, modernist architecture of the sports centres.
Petteri Cederberg: With Colour – With Sound (2016, 05:28)
Infinity can be approached with imagination or mathematics – yet it can never be attained. Each frame of the animation is a painting or a drawing. The soundtrack is composed of manipulated recordings.
Pekka Sassi: A Friend (2016, 02:22)
Happy hippie kinetic film. A Friend is a contructive abstract short film about something cold and distant turning into warm and friendly. It’s a kinetic folksong. Hooray to Liz Rhodes and Donovan.
Cameraless Excursions: special screenings and masterclass
Mika Taanila: Branches (2017)
Nordisk Panorama presents a masterclass by Mika Taanila, preceded by a Sunday morning screening of two of his latest works, Branches (2017) and Tectonic Plate (2016) on September 24 at 11:30. Following the screening at 14:00, the session deals with alternative ways of approaching the art of the moving image. Rooted deeply in film history and cinephilia, Taanila’s artistic practice covers a range of techniques, from direct photocopying of film and collage to found footage and even series of cinematic works without moving images.
Taanila’s short film The World (2017) is selected in Nordisk Panorama’s Best Nordic Short Film competition. The screening titled “Sound it Out” is screened on Saturday, September 23, at 13:30 and on Sunday, September 24, at 10:00.
Narrative Tremor in Malmö Konsthall, Sweden, 9.–30.9.2017
Nordisk Panorama, Malmö, Sweden, 21.–26.9.2017
More information: Nordisk Panorama