Patrik Söderlund’s Realms & Elli Vuorinen’s Still Lives compete at VIS Vienna Shorts

Patrik Söderlund’s Realms (2018) and Elli Vuorinen’s Still Lives (2019) were selected in the competition programmes of VIS Vienna Shorts Festival, held from May 28 to June 2.

Still Lives will be screened in the International Competition Animation Avantgarde screening “Impossible Shapes and Other Stories” on Friday, May 31, at 15:30.

In Still Lives, the concept of busy stillness is explored from various standpoints as museum artefacts from all around the world reflect on the mundane challenges of modern life.

Elli Vuorinen is an animation artist who lives and works in rural Finland. Her works often balance between surreal, delightful and disgusting. Although her approach is often humoristic the films deal with significant themes of melancholy, solitude and hope. Vuorinen’s style is versatile – blending of minimal and handcrafted, she creates works that are playful and bold. Different animation techniques inspire her work. Vuorinen’s farm studio allows her to work with everything between large scale stop motion to 2D computer animation.

Elli Vuorinen: Still Lives (2019)

Elli Vuorinen: Still Lives (2019)

Realms will be screened in the International Competition Fiction & Documentary screening “Maybe We Are Already Dead” on Saturday, June 1, at 20:30.

A short film about geological epochs, kingdoms of life and mass extinctions, Realms voyages through deep time from the primeval ocean to the post-human future.

Writer and director Patrik Söderlund is the founding member of artist duo IC-98. Realms is his first film. With backgrounds in visual arts and cultural studies, Söderlund’s and Visa Suonpää’s 20- year collaboration as IC-98 has produced artist publications, site and context specific projects and interventions, animated moving image installations and various public commissions. IC-98 received the Finnish State Art Prize in 2009 and represented Finland at the Venice Biennale in 2015 with Abendland (Hours, Years, Aeons), which was picked by Sundance Film Festival in 2016. Their work has been shown extensively at museums, biennials and festivals in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Though their practice is essentially conceptual, ic-98 is best known for animations, which combine classical drawing and digital effects, depicting landscapes shaped by long time durations, natural and human histories and climate. The landscapes are always devoid of humans but completely shaped by their actions.


VIS Vienna Shorts Festival, May 28 – June 2 2019, Austria

More information: VIS Vienna Shorts Festival