MIKA TAANILA | Short film reel I: Futuro / Mannerlatta (FIN 2016)

In order for you to have enough time to get yourself in mental shape for our tribute to MIKA TAANILA at GEGENkino2017, here’s already another notification:

On Friday, April 14, we will show a selection of Taanila’s (retro) futurist short films, that revolve around the theme of technology—be it scientific technology or technologies of the self, like sports—and where we will even embark on 3D cinema, for the first time at Luru-Kino in der Spinnerei.

After that, we will show Taanila’s two techno-symphonies The Sad Song of Hard-Edged Transition Wipe Markers & Mannerlatta (Tectonic Plate), the last of which was made using almost entirely xerox copying images.

Futuro

Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow (FIN 1998, 28’, OV/English subtitles, 35mm)

RoboCup99 (FIN 2000, 25’, OV/English subtitles , 35mm)

Six Day Run (FIN 2013, 15’, OV/English subtitles, DCP)

Optical Sound (FIN 2005, 6’, no dialogue, 35mm)

Delay of Game (FIN 2017, 6’, no dialogue, 3D, file)

The ambitious utopia of a manmade, autonomous machine found a mad realisation in a football robot in 1999, whose very particular sporty genius Taanila dedicated awell-deserved memorial to with RoboCup99. Six Day Run came about during the ”Self-Transcendence Six Day Race” – the hardest competition of its kind. Film and protagonist – the extreme-run superstar Ashprihanal Pekka Aalto – transcend each other equally, shed their disdainful physicality and lose themselves in the pure spirit of movement. As a 3D animation, Delay Of Game captures a nocturnal match of ice hockey: ”On Thursday, January 14th, 1954 the weather in Helsinki was mild, only minus two degrees celcius.”

14. April, 8pm – Luru Kino at the Spinnerei

€ 6,5 (5,5 red.) / € 9 (8 red.) for a double ticket incl. MANNERLAATTA

Director Mika Taanila will be present.

Mannerlatta (Tectonic Plate)

FIN 2016, 74’, OV/English subtitles, DCP

The Sad Song of Hard-Edged Transition Wipe Markers

FIN 2017, 4’, no dialogue, file

On his way back from a business trip to Tokyo, a nameless protagonist unexplainably gets stuck in a hotel near Helsinki airport. Not only is he not getting anywhere physically, he is also stuck in an endless loop of multi-tasking action, his attention cut up, his actions constantly oriented towards various directions at the same time. Telephones, computers and heart rate monitors claim his attendance, his awareness is being changed, his sense of time dissolves. Mannerlaatta is a lettrist film about aviophobia, security checks and time zones, which is produced entirely without camera. Its pictures originate from using photogram-technique and xeroxing: objects were directly exposed to 35mm reversal film and air safety brochures were printed onto clear film with a photo copier. The result has a downright disembodied cinematic quality, aesthetically reflecting a protagonist’s obsessive stream of thoughts and pictures all trapped inside an inner monologue revolving around itself. The soundtrack is provided by Mika Vainio, who is intern known as the pioneer of electronic music. The Sad Song of Hard-Edged Transition Wipe Markers stands in the tradition of early abstract rhythm experiments of Hans Richter. However, Taanila assembles his visual symphony out of switching signals that once marked the sequence change in TV in the upper right corner of the image.

14 April, 10pm – Luru Kino at the Spinnerei

€ 6,5 (5,5 red.) / € 9 (8 red.) for a double ticket incl. Short film reel I: Futuro