AV-arkki’s and Cinema Orion’s screening programme Art for Art’s Sake continues with a screening “Memory Traces” on Tuesday, April 23 at 17:00 in Cinema Orion. The screening takes us through both forested and urban terrain in search of private and shared memories, through fabulation, mourning, and excavation. Both the dead, the missing and the survivors are present.

The screening begins with two short films from the AV-arkki archive: Maija Blåfield’s If I Were Buried at a Street Corner (2011), which explores waste and remains, and Liisa Karvonen and Ulla Väätäinen’s Expectation (2010), which returns to the Continuation War and its intergenerational trauma and longing. 

“Memory Traces” continues with young Mexican filmmaker Sofia Peypoch’s earth altars (2023), which won both the Main Award and New Talent Award last October at the Doclisboa festival in Portugal. The film is the author’s personal research and an attempt to find new routes to the trail of violence against women and to explore the essence of survival. Do bones remember the fear they have felt? What is left when a cactus decays? 

Art for Art’s Sake brings together artists’ moving image, media art and experimental film from Finland and around the world, both classics and new works. The screening programme is supported by the Kone Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Culture, and the City of Helsinki. The curatorial team includes Diego Ginartes, Sepideh Rahaa, Tytti Rantanen, and Azar Saiyar. The last screening of this spring season takes place on May 21 2024. The screenings have free admission – book your free ticket from Cinema Orion’s ticket sales!

Synopses:

Maija Blåfield: If I Were Buried at a Street Corner (FI 2011, 05:40, Finnish, S)

If I Were Buried at a Street Corner is a short film about looking and seeing again – on which the experience of beauty in everyday life is often based. It was shot during an artist’s residency in Frankfurt am Main, where an abandoned tombstone provided the starting point for the observation of an unfamiliar setting. The city appears as an empty landscape, seen from an outsider’s perspective. The hierarchy, utility and logic of the surroundings are sidelined and monuments can be found in the backyard. With thanks for the inspiration to Mr. and Mrs. Dreher.

Liisa Karvonen & Ulla Väätäinen: Expectation (FI 2010, 04:00, no dialogue, 7)

Set in war-time, the work tells about a disappearance of a person and the subsequent wait. Traces of a life lived and of the twists and turns of fate remain. The story hovers at the turning point of cyclical time where substance breaks away from the real world.

Sofia Peypoch: earth altars (MX 2023, 69:00, Spanish, 12)

The author returns to the site of her kidnapping. Amid the darkness and silence, her hands search underground for traces of a buried memory. Others replicate this chimerical gesture. The earth is an immutable witness that refuses to forget.