Marja Helander’s Eatnanvuloš Lottit – Birds in the Earth (2018), Jonna Kina’s Arr. for a Scene (2017), and Elina Oikari’s Govadas (2018) were selected in the international competition of the 37th Uppsala International Short Film Festival, held from October 22–28 in Sweden.
Birds in the Earth is a short film based on dance. The main characters are two young Sámi ballet students; Birit and Katja Haarla. The movie tells a bit melancholic story through their dance performances. At the same time it examines the deeper questions of the ownership of Sámi land. The short film won the Risto Jarva Prize in Tampere Film Festival 2018.
Marja Helander (b.1965) is a Finnish photographic and video artist. She graduated from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki in 1999. Her earlier work explored her own identity between the Finnish and the Sámi culture. Marja Helander has participated in solo and group exhibitions and her works have been acquired for various public collections in Finland and abroad.
Govadas explores the contradiction and harmony between humans and nature through Sámi poetry. The cyclical perception of time among the only indigenous people living in the European Union is presented in the work as unfolding forms and layers based on the archive material from the 1940’s and the super 8 mm film footage from 2010’s. Govadas creates a kinetic meditation on time, memory, landscape and the ruptures between them.
Elina Oikari is Helsinki-based filmmaker and visual artist. She received M.A. from the Aalto University Documentary Film Studies (2014). Oikari has made short films especially for film concerts in collaboration with musicians, composers and conductors. Oikari emphasizes experimental connections between image and sound in her works whose themes are related to the classics of dramatic literature, experiences of otherness and the generational experience of the people born in the 1980’s. Her works have been screened internationally at various film festivals and music events.
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. Awarded as the Best Nordic Short Film at Nordisk Panorama 2017, 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.
Screenings at the Uppsala ISFF:
Helander: Eatnanvuloš lottit (2018)
Marja Helander: Eatnanvuloš Lottit – Birds in the Earth
(International Competition 1 “The Tie That Binds“)
Monday, October 22, 13:00 Slottsbiografen
Wednesday, October 24, 19:00 Slottsbiografen
Friday, October 26, 19:00 Regina
Elina Oikari: Govadas
(International Competition 2 “In Your Dreams“)
Monday, October 22, 15:00 Slottsbiografen
Wednesday, October 24, 21:00 Slottsbiografen
Saturday, October 27, 13:00 Regina
Jonna Kina: Arr. for a Scene
(International Competition 6 “Speed of Light“)
Tuesday, October 23, 15:00, Slottsbiografen
Wednesday, October 24, 13:00, Slottsbiografen
Saturday, October 27, 17:00 Slottsbiografen
The 37th Uppsala International Short Film Festival, October 22–28 2018, Sweden
More information: Uppsala ISFF