A screening curated by Ulla Heikkilä, featuring films that are important to her.
Language: Eng Duration: 80 min Age Limit: 12+
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Wed 4.3. -
19:00 -
Finnkino Cine Atlas 4 -
12,50
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C013
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Fri 6.3.
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19:30
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Finnkino Cine Atlas 3
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12,50
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E055
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In many ways, planning my very own Carte blanche screening for Tampere Film Festival is a dream come true. I’m from Tampere, and TFF has been an important event for me ever since I was a teenager, and it’s undoubtedly one of the reasons I became a film director. I’ve always had a secret dream of becoming a curator, but since I don’t know if one lifetime is enough to live out all of one’s dreams, it’s amazing to get to curate at least this one screening.
I wanted to compile my Carte blanche screening so that it would contain as varied a selection of short films as possible: something short, something long, something experimental, something animated. Still, my most important criteria was that I liked it – that I had been deeply touched and impressed by these films, and that viewing them has stuck with me for years.
The most nepotistic of my selections for this screening is Untitled (burned rubber on asphalt 2018), whose director, Tinja Ruusuvuori, I have known since I was born. (The producer, cinematographer and sound designer are also my dear friends.) To me this film is related to being from Tampere, being in art school, being in film school, and this film festival, even though it doesn’t have that much to do with any of those things. To a viewer not carrying the same personal history as I am, it’s a lovely film about art and a person’s need to leave their mark on the world.
Min Börda is an animated musical about the pain of being human in the modern world. Lasso is a wordless dance piece about desire, longing and unable to face something, and the shortest film of the screening, Tissi, a minute-long black-and-white film about a breast producing milk. When I was younger I didn’t really get video art, but then I started dating a visual artist and many things changed, including my relationship to experimental film. Sometimes it’s good to look at art that words can’t find their way around, and that you just have to surrender to entirely.
The screening is bookended by its two fiction films, Gasman (dir. Lynne Ramsay) and Wasp (dir. Andrea Arnold). Both of them represent British social realism which highlight the point of view of child characters. I love the way these films portray their characters with respect and recognition of the full human spectrum. The girls in Gasman aren’t the victims of their two-faced father: their humanity isn’t defined by the secrets of adults, but instead they have their own wills and own lives. The characters of Wasp yearn for love, acceptance, and full lives and aren’t just defined by their poverty. In this way, Andrea Arnold’s way of portraying a social class is unique.
My favourite elements in film are concepts of holiness, magic, childhood, physicality, and anguish. It’s these elements that have also created this screening. I think that film is a good vehicle to reflect instinctual and fundamental things. Film strongly appeals to our feelings and our physicality, because it forces us to share a specific amount of time with it. Few art forms bind the viewer to itself in this way. That’s probably why film has this ability to go straight to the most fundamental questions. It may not do so intellectually, but on an emotional level it prods at the core experiences of being human. All of the films in this screening reach somewhere deep as well; they grab hold of your heart and squeeze it into a slightly new position. What they’ll do when placed back to back, in this exact order, no one knows – yet.
Ulla Heikkilä
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Gasman
Isän salaisuusDirector: Lynne RamsayCountry: United KingdomYear: 1998Genre: FictionDuration: 15 minA story of two children who react with naive simple emotion to a situation imposed upon them by their father’s secret.
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Lasso
Director: Salla TykkäCountry: FinlandYear: 2000Genre: FictionDuration: 4 minA woman sees a powerful man behind the window. Lasso exposes a moment in a young woman's life; moment at which one's inability to face the other – or oneself, even – is squeezed into a powerful sensation somewhere on the edge of the unreal.
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Untitled (burned rubber on asphalt, 2018)
Director: Tinja RuusuvuoriCountry: FinlandYear: 2019Genre: DocumentaryDuration: 21 minAge Limit:
In a remote Norwegian village the weaving roads have become the subject of controversy. Assuming the role of detective, the documentary investigates the bewildering phenomena of car skid marks and their mysterious appearance. Winding, looping, curving, the hypnotising patterns reveal unexpected frictions in the village. Some brand the skid marks as an irresponsible and dangerous act, while others view the mesmerizing marks as a form of art.
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Min Börda
The BurdenTaakkaDirector: Niki Lindroth von BahrCountry: SwedenYear: 2017Genre: AnimationDuration: 15 minAge Limit:
A dark musical enacted in a market place, situated next to a freeway. The employees of the various commercial venues deal with boredom and existential anxiety by performing cheerful musical turns. The apocalypse is a tempting liberator.
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Tissi
BoobDirector: Milja ViitaCountry: FinlandYear: 2004Genre: ExperimentalDuration: 1 minBlack and white film about breasts, how they grow and ooze milk.
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Wasp
Director: Andrea ArnoldCountry: United KingdomYear: 2003Genre: FictionDuration: 26 minIn late summer the wasps cannot find enough food to feed their young and start looking for sweets. Although they are not especially aggressive, they will sting if provoked... Zoe, a single mom, is struggling to feed her four kids and is blinded by the hope offered by Dave, a young single man who asks her out.
