“Art for Art’s Sake”, the new screening programme for experimental film continues on Tuesday, December 13 at 17:00 in Cinema Orion. “Art for Art’s Sake” is a collaborative project between AV-arkki – The Centre for Finnish Media Art and Cinema Orion. The screenings combine experimental film and artists’ moving image, old and new, from Finland and abroad. The theme for the first fall season is “Body in micro- and macrocosmos”.

The December screening leads us to reflect death from many perspectives. Screened from 35 mm film print, Milja Viita’s Bambi takes a close look on a Disney classic on loss and death, a source of many an intergenerational wound. Ephraim Asili’s Many Thousands Gone juxtaposes two cities to create a space for mourning those who were killed in the course of the African diaspora, marked by slavery and violence. Maria Ångerman’s The Dead Walk Side by Side with the Living takes a dialogue from Marguerite Duras’s Agatha (1981) as its starting point to explore alienation and separation and questions the line between humans and other species. The two last short films of the screening address the otherworldly animals. Risto-Pekka Blom’s Kudryavka – Little Ball of Fur is a homage to Laika the space dog, doomed to the eternal loneliness. But do animals go to heaven after life? This is debated thoroughly in the found footage short film by Neozoon Collective.

The films are followed by a panel discussion on depicting the animal death in art. The attendees are artist Milja Viita, art historian, PhD Roni Gren and sosiologue and animal rights activist, PhD Salla Tuomivaara. The discussion will be held in Finnish and moderated by Tytti Rantanen, the programme coordinator in AV-arkki, Centre for Finnish Media Art.

The screening programme is supported by Kone Foundation, Ministry of Culture and Education, and the City of Helsinki. The members of the curatorial team are Diego Ginartes, Sepideh Rahaa, Tytti Rantanen, and Azar Saiyar.

Films:
Milja Viita: Bambi (FI, 2022, 10:00, no dialogue)
Ephraim Asili: Many Thousands Gone (BR, US, 2014, 07:37, English)
Maria Ångerman: The Dead Walk Side by Side with the Living (FI, 2016, 22:11, English)
Risto-Pekka Blom: Kudryavka – Little Ball of Fur (Pikku kippura, FI, 2013, 05:06, Finnish with English ST)
Neozoon: Biting the Dust (DE, 2021, 13:25, English)