Discoveries from Finland World Cinema

What is The Transient? It’s that fleeting moment when you question what you’re seeing, when uncanny valley takes over and when harmonious wildlife is revealed as a monstrous result of cloning and obsessive manipulation of nature. Or the moment when you ignore the lure of the real and give in to the overwhelming beauty of growth, the blooming of spring and the glow of midsummer night. Real, based on a true story, artificial, imaginary, a natural paradise, an apocalyptic corruption of nature. The Transient is all of these things and more.

We used to believe that being left-handed could lead to criminality, stupidity, and immoral behaviour. So we tried to educate our children not to use that hand. History Bleeds Under Your Fingernails is a short film on the history of taming the left hand and on the culture of cultivating the bodies that do not fit.

Reorganized fragments of television commercials create an illusion that is different from the original clips. The images are still enchanting and appealing, but lack a direct connection to the product. The context and interpretation become more vague and open.

Between places. Between people. Helsinki–Tehran is a cinematic study on immigration and memory – on the shared verbal and nonverbal knowledge and emotional understanding which travels with displaced people from one generation to another.

Edith lives in a world of dreams and memories as well as reality, as a result of dementia. But does she suffer? An attempt to depict the mindset of the old woman.

An experimental computer animation based on the visualization of a composition based on the formula of the AIDS virus.

Hyeena, infected with HIV, wants company. The girls Zebra and Impala are looking for a new home. Impala gets into trouble and Zebra defends the girls' right to say NO.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is considered by many to be the best fairy tale of all. It best describes the diversity of people; evil, cruelty, greed, selfishness, goodness, kindness, nobility and even innocence. The story has many lessons, the most important of which is that goodness always wins.

Night falls down on empty business premises - and lights go up. A minimalistic musical.

Hypertension rages like a forest fire in Senegalese family.

A real rarity in silent cinema with an appearance by the father of the Kiljunen books, Jalmari Finne, as a film director. A funny little story about the teacher and students of Norssi and the dogs of the city of Helsinki. Young Joel Rinne as a teacher in his first role on the big screen.

After the nuclear holocaust the mankind faced more dangerous threat than freezing cold of everlasting winter or raving mad mutants: depletion of alcohol. In the ruthless future the only way to survive is to be intoxicated...all the time.

A human-political satire about war and peace, optimism and pessimism. A struggle between despair and faith in life, in which neither wins, but life goes on.

This experimental film directs our attention toward abstract imagery, which accentuates the stock footage present on-screen, before guiding our attention toward text excerpts and colorful shapes that have been edited in a rhythmic fashion and culminating in scenes depicting everyday life. Together with the symphonic background music, they form a coherent composition that could serve as a memory for one person, a dream for another, and a reality for someone else.

Finnish short film.

The Finnish tango is hard and sweaty. A hot and passionate encounter and a great 2D animation jewel.

The title Green Matters refers to filamentous green algae which is growing excessively in the Baltic Sea. Green Matters approaches eutrophication from a new perspective. Considering the enormous importance green algae had in the evolution of flora and fauna, its importance as an essential source of oxygen, and its energeticand nutritional values, it truly deserves our respect. Moreover, we can be fascinated by its beauty, when observed in its underwater surroundings. Mia Mäkelä studied green algae and their possible use applying traditional rug-making techniques. Her project aims to help the eutrophicated Baltic Sea by foraging algae and putting them to good use.

A young man struggles to write his screenplay after an emotionally painful break-up.

Mockumentary that follows Finland's newest superhero where we get to know about his origins and powers.

A man has barricaded himself in his home because of one-sided propaganda. He needs to take a leap of faith to find his loved ones.

Documentary about Finnish concentration camps build for Russians inhabiting the Karelia area during the Continuation War.

Some stuff I made one evening utilizing GTA V. Inspired by Phil Solomon's Rehearsals for Retirement.

The factory's chief shop steward, Esko Mäenpää, firmly believes in cooperation and negotiation between employees and factory management. With the help of Vuorineuvos' daughter Laura, cooperation begins to run smoothly, until the workers accuse Mäenpää of both class betrayal and fraternizing with the bosses.

In this satirical rural comedy, the feared and notorious Kalle Kuikka threatens the peace of the region, which police chief Pappinen and fire chief Miettinen are trying to protect.

The Last Supper by Christian Lindblad (b. 1963) is a short political satire. Kete is a long-term unemployed and gets by on different social subsidies. Now he has decided to commit suicide for the common good… Winner of the Main Prize in the National Competition and the Jameson short film Award at Tampere in 2002.

A story of a nightmare.

A study on non-places and fringes, on seeing and being seen. Webcam-material collected from the net forms the base of the piece: roadsides, parking lots, remote shores and surveillance camera footage from around the world. The piece combines drawing, animation and video-image in multiple layers.

Throughout her life, alopecia has directed people’s observing gazes and assumptions towards Aino’s bald head. Alopecia has restricted her life in many ways, but in the best case, opened her world to the strength in baldness.

In this production exploring the connections between natural and cultural history, artist Axel Straschnoy heads to Savonranta to learn more about the devils of Paasselkä. The locals tell stories of the strange optical illusion above the lake, the earliest sightings of which date back to the 18th century. According to some, it’s the devil himself; others claim it to be Pajari, a character so evil that even the devil didn’t want him. The present-day sightings become a part of the meteorite lake’s folklore.

In the digital age, with the help of map applications, wandering the streets of a foreign city is easier than ever. Sketch for the Last Map overlaps the translucent indoor and outdoor spaces and questions what we miss out on, when we only stare at maps set on street view on our screens. The piece is a continuation of artist Lauri Astala’s earlier work, which explored the relationship between image and reality as well as the experiential and cultural traditions of portraying space.

About the project 'NoCore: Untold', where gestures of physical theatre and dance techniques meet for expressing the stories of people at the margins of society related to gender identity, ethnicity and cultural background.

Finnish singer songwriter J. Karjalainen creates a new artist character called Lännen-Jukka. As Lännen-Jukka he goes to the USA to find the origin of Finnish American folkmusic. He meets Finnish Americans and performs with them and to them.

In the documentary, we meet three young British women whose lives are overshadowed by congenital or accidental facial deformities. Although the insecurity related to the face limits women's everyday life in a superficial society, we see how the constant struggle with appearance can also empower in unexpected ways.

A man digs up another man's grave in order to claim something that belongs to him.

Part time Twitch streamer, part time drug courier; both low level. Slithering between life and death, online and offline. The carefree summer of global progress seems to be over - are these the final days of both, the illusion of overarching narrative, and of Jerome the Saint.

Seek Bromance is a cinematic performance showing a transformative relationship between two transmasculines who have very different attitudes as to what masculinity can be. A trans romance situated at the end of the world.

Curiosity about a world without gender sets a journey through a world of jellyfish and disco uncles, creating space for four trans people to share how they relate (or not) to their own gender, imagine visions of their own queer utopia, and reveal whether gender can be felt in your toes.

Pekka Jalkanen, a Finnish modern music composer, begins to compose his Russian Concerto – a concerto of longing for home – in his childhood’s home, near Russian border. At the same time, his mind makes a trip to Mother Russia and to Balkans to collect materials for his upcoming work. Analysing reasons for economical and cultural chaos in the new united Europe, the composer finally arrives at the tomb of Andrei Tarkovsky, a Russian master of world’s cinema, near Paris, to respect the memory of the auteur who spoke about longing in his films.

A woman suffering from cancer is saved by friendly computer viruses. Before that, the viruses had infected researchers and caused, among other things, beer floating. The film is a good-natured, funny, and surreal adventure set in Finland, with no violence. Technically, it is an amateur film, with all the acting, directing, sound recording, and editing done without prior experience or external funding.

Old photographic plates were found from Louejärvi village in Rovaniemi. Young photographer Hilja Paloniemi was given the job to help to clean the photographic plates. It was found out that the old photos were taken by Matti Körkkö in the early 1900s, including pictures of legendary Nätti-Jussi.

Three mystical characters gather in misty mountain cabin, where they start to tell stories to each other. Folktales takes viewers to Finnish landscapes where mysterious and strange incidents have occurred over time. After three stories the mist has passed and three characters leave the cabin.

Calls go to voice mail. Lonely cars and street lights roam the highway by night. People at the street view are connected by threads. The patient leads a perfect life. Please leave a message after the tone is a story about disconnection, about the struggle with real life encounters and about living outside of your own life.

Mohammed, a refuge man, finds a special connection with Kristian, a Finnish family man.

Stormy autumn evening. Man digging a hole relentlessly. He is after something important. But is it too risky to dig a hole this deep?

A spontaneous street movie, a record of ‘swinging London’ where Erkki Kurenniemi had travelled to assess the commercial potential of his instrument DIMI-A.

Poetic short documentary about Finnish rituals of happiness.

The parts are Sacre (2015), Sacre 2: HEX (2017) and Sacr3: Eternal Return (2019). The video works are following an anonymous protagonist searching for freedom and meaningfulness.

“Cricket refers to mass communication, which bridges the gap between residents in different cities separated by geography and culture. This video also reveals how appearances can deceive, for a sense of individualism is born out of harmonious unity. Like crickets, it takes shape, gently splitting and singing at first and ultimately subsuming the entire body to bring a person to madness and schizophrenia. The video images are reconstructed montages of performances that have been reassembled in chronological order. The conclusion appears sinister; but, what is worse, a detached mass person, all parts behaving as one, or a personality scourged by individual desires?” – Marikki Hakola

Freeze frame: the most absurd technique since the invention of the moving image. Through an elaborate process of duplicating the same image over and over again, it creates the illusion of stillness. In this stop-motion film, identical figures try to perform the hopeless task of preserving blocks of ice, like archivists. The repetitive movements reanimate the animals captured inside the blocks.

A film made in 1970 in the home of Finnish composer Ilkka Kussisto (whose two sons are famous violinists) when the Bill Evans Trio visited him for a private performance.

A portrait of the Finnish filmmaker Rauni Mollberg who made a notable splash on the international festival circuit in 1974 with his feature debut, “The Earth Is A Sinful Song”, based on a novel by Timo K. Mukka, one of Finland’s most controversial young writers.