Discoveries from Finland World Cinema

What remains and what gets lost when a thing becomes a museum object? Made in collaboration with Satakunta Museum, a historical museum of Satakunta region, Finland.

A close and passionate look at the art of arctic peoples from the earliest findings to the beginning of the 20th century. “There are no talking heads, there is no dramatic lighting or sharp focus in these two long movies. Rather, each object is lovingly filmed, as if inviting the artwork to converse with us. Lehmuskallio has discovered how to let his camera speak to the art, and how to let the art reply, and thereby this northern art can speak with us as well.” (Kathleen Osgood, in Uralic Imaginations on Film)

And the greatest of these is love. Director’s grandparents letters and grandmother’s diaries have a dialogue throughout centuries. A bed which has been taken away rises as a symbol for the lost.

Karjalaine iäni explores the realities of being a young Karelian person in Finland today. The Karelians are a cultural and, in some cases, linguistic minority traditionally residing in eastern Finland and western Russia. Karelians and speakers of the Karelian language have lived in Finland for as long as Finns, but their culture and language have received no legal recognition. Both the culture and language are endangered, and the Karelian community, including young people, are continuously working to revitalize the Karelian language and raise awareness of the Karelian culture. Made in collaboration with Karjalazet Nuoret Suomes – Karjalaiset Nuoret Šuomešša ry as a part of Karjalan kielen elvytysprojekti 2022 (University of Eastern Finland).

In this tale dripped in existential dread, a doctor hears about his patient’s frightening dream, which drives him to confront long-suppressed nightmares from his childhood.

The narrator of the film was diagnosed with proprioception disorder by her physiotherapist: She lacks a normal awareness of her body in space and thus a reference to the world around her. Dancing as a therapy might help. Instead, she takes a ghost train into Finland’s television history, to the 1960s, when ordinances forbade spontaneous dancing because of a Medieval decree.

Kojamo is a kinetic story about moving against the current upon returning upstream.

A waterfall, a moose, a marsh. Graceful swans, owls and woodpeckers. A change of season and, finally, the invasion of human civilization, the sound of chainsaws and gunfire. From the perspective of the animals, the film explores the ecological disaster and man's conception of nature bent to the sole purpose of serving him.

What if another world is already here: Materializing posthuman feminist thoughts on female/animal/technology, an AI recording body enters a parasitic conference and feeds off an academic institution and its resources. "We Bites Us" combines film, AI, and social interactions to suggest organizational scores for artistic production and collaborations.

After the end of the war, Finland had to find a new home for a total of about 430,000 evacuees, of which about 407,000 were Karelians. Laulumaiden muisto is an emotional documentary film that tells the story of the evacuees from Karelia and their descendants who were placed in the region of South Ostrobothnia. It sheds light on how the emigrants who lost their homes were able to preserve their own identity and why Karelia still fascinates and interests future generations. The war in Ukraine, which broke out in the middle of filming, made the documentary surprisingly timely.

Finnish open source community Electric cars – Now! converted a Toyota Corolla from an internal combustion engine car to an electric car in 2009. Why on earth? Electric cars can be seen in traffic everywhere these days. Many people might not think that in early 2000s Finland, they were science fiction fantasy. The community wanted to show the car industry: it started converting combustion engine cars to electric ones and sharing the conversion instructions online. The purpose was to spark a revolution in which all cars in the world could be converted to emission-free. The project received considerable publicity. Finland was seen as a pioneer in the electric car industry. Where did the eCorollas disappear? Or is the time of conversion electric cars yet to come?

In the essay film Craving Earth, the filmmaker and visual artist Anna-Sofia Nylund tries to explain the indescribable feeling one can have towards nature and its beauty.

The main characters want to be alone but random events force them to meet each other's eyes.

“Hope” discovers the kind of dreams different people have, whilst also considering how the tone of these wishes changes according to varying life circumstance. By experiencing all of these wishes together, the spectator is urged to reflect upon their own personal hopes and desires.

Exactly is some re-arranged found footage with its original sound track re-united. By omitting just the name of the protagonist I have turned this recycled strip of film (cut for recycling purposes from a 35mm screening print into a 16mm leader by an unanimous lab years ago- thus the undulation of images) in to three meditations on the international market economy.

How to survive as a horsie?

Equilibrium is achieved when opposing forces or influences are balanced. Regardless of inner or outer chaos and imbalance the totality will end up in balanced state. This comforting idea is the motive for the animation.

The "brother film" of Legokaupunki, made by Jary and Jiri Kuukkanen´and a few friends between 1977-1980, published by Heimo Kuukkanen. This animation, created not long after the introduction of the LEGO minifigure in 1978, feature the earliest known use of a minifig walk cycle.

The 1977 animation Legokaupunki is the earliest known brickfilm filmed in Finland and one of the earliest known brickfilms in general. The brickfilm was shot on 8mm film using a French camera called a CAMEX 8 Cellule Reflex.

Four friends in their early twenties are discussing about the big issues in life while the entrance examinations for The Theater Academy are approaching.

Sonja feels like forgetting is the only way to move forward with her life. She extracts memories of a loved one from her mind, only to find out that she can't make the memories from a previous life completely disappear. All those memories are still there, deep within her mind.

After Mieko Shiomi, Passing Music for a Tree, 1964: Pass by a tree or let some object pass by a tree, but each time differently.

The days are long. Their core is hot. Thermographic camera looks at a new residential area in eastern Helsinki.

A film about an otherworldly economic monster which dominates our worldly life by its nervousness, fear, storms, tailspins and sentiments. Two atypical economic forecasters with supernatural powers try to predict the upcoming movements of these mysterious market forces.

A documentary about Russo-Finnish war activities in summer 1944 in Aunus.

A documentary about the fantasy and reality of home regions. The director takes a trip back to past decades and ends up observing Finns in the present day. The film is structured around commissioned films shot in Finnish municipalities and cities.

Marko is spending a relaxed week at home. Everything changes when his neighbour praises his new robot lawnmower. Marko needs to get a better one. The bloody survival story begins – and the grass is not the only thing that is going get cut.

Sami Pitkänen and Santtu Pätkänen have arrived in Turku from America. The friends end up working in a restaurant run by Olikka, the boss of a gang involved in black market trading and food card fraud. The friends flee the city and find work with their acquaintance Veikko Koivunen, who is planning an ideal agricultural community.

Pathé Frères, at the time the world's largest company in film production and pioneers in documentary films, visited Kiruna and Malmberget in 1913. The result is a fantastic insight into the mining of that time.

A looped extract from the science fiction film 'The Fly', in which 50s man explains the principle of broadcast to 50s woman, becomes a comment upon itself as the medium begins to imitate the message.

I've been bad but I've been good too wraps the film's materiality in time, the aging body and the multi-generational bodily experience of excess. A childish or strange narrator's voice speaks to a grandma and at the same time to women and mothers across generations and strata of history.

Toivo and Alisa are united by their infatuation with the same person. They also share loneliness and the difficulty of finding human connection.

Meriläinen’s contribution to this video program is the most metaphoric representation of ideas around the human body as object. It focuses on slabs of tactile geletin, which is repeatedly stabbed with a serrated knife. This slow motion violence is arguably a reinterpretation of ideas around the body in sculpture in for example early surrealist works by Giacometti. The fleshy pink tones of the work emphasise the human aspect of the material. Here the inanimate becomes anthropomorphic.

Finnish filmmaker Sami van Ingen, a great-grandson of Robert Flaherty, made an expedition to the residence of Bruce Baillie not long after the turn of the century and documented the results of his visit. Study Reel is, as Baillie described it in a letter to the Brazilian magazine Tropico, "filled with commentary on various of the films along with the one-hour video of myself and family".

Mirna's mother died from ovarian cancer when she was just a child. Now she has been diagnosed with a tumor of the ovary. Because of this she also ends up processing her mother's death.

Gravity takes over in this imaginative animated short when a lesbian couple attempts to get back together.

A film that addresses the daily experience of feeling different. Interviews with people who fall in between the gender spectrum provide revelations about what it’s like to not feel 100% male or female.

Alexander Torbica was raised in a dysfunctional family where both alcohol and violence were present. Today he's 23 years old and has gotten an opportunity to create an installation about his life. His mother hasn't visited him in 5 year. Now He presents his life to her.

Documentary about Finnish immigrants in the New York City.

The sacred satire of the "stand art" host and great stuff before they become dust.

An ordinary "matta" is unwittingly drawn into a gruesome manhunt.

An experimental trip that deals with occultism as well as extraterrestrial life.

A journey that makes us question what is happening to our planet and what we can still do for it.

Magma is a balm for soothing terrestrial aches, a memento of worlds not yet imagined. To exhale is the smallest possible ritual, one that has to do with memory: an old world, a lava lamp, the smell of gas, a suspended bubble; a sacrifice that is the end of all sacrifice. (Anna Tomi)

A girl smashes a car with a sledge hammer.

The Eternal Sleep of the Man is a collaborative film by Sami Sänpäkkilä and Anna-Mari Nousiainen. The film depicts magical realism and seeks solace in our urban environment. In the passage titled #suomineito (Finnish maiden) a woman in blue clothes and blue hair hangs upside down from a rope in a tree. In the passage Kultasuu (Goldmouth) Nousiainen cuts her hair in the middle of a golden glitter rain and in another passage a man reads a burning book and sings of hope. The work is available as a nine minute short film with surround sound or as a 15 channel installation with two stereo audio channels.

A colourised silent film about the massive construction site of the Hämeensilta bridge in Tampere in the years 1928–1929. The film offers a precise and at times a humorous image of the Tampere city centre from nearly a hundred years ago. The four sculptures on the bridge, made by Wäinö Aaltonen, were donated by factory owner Rafael Haarla.

A provocative documentary about the emblem of today’s Tampere, the Näsinneula tower that looms over the city. The symbol for Super Tampere could be called as the mighty Super Sledgehammer. It plays an integral role in the film that deals with the city ruining the milieu, as does the music by Usko Meriläinen.

Male Gaze is a comedy. This short film uses female gaze and queer feminist optics to showcase machismo that exists in cis-male-gays.

An experimental short film about imaginary identities on a stress getaway from their routine filled daily lives. Another Matrix movie we could have lived without.