A portrait of a small-town that is the unlikely site of a 'renaissance' of 'safe' nuclear energy started in 2004, a project that soon spiraled out of control.

Return of the Atom

In a bold and original approach to memory, this Lettrist-inspired film maps an anxiety-ridden plane journey from Tokyo to Helsinki without the aid of photographic images. A variety of interventions on the film strip are combined with an atmospheric sound design to create a subjective story of displacement and containment. In an age when experience is increasingly mediated through digital technologies, Taanila seeks out an alternative language in the sensuous surfaces of the celluloid material.

Tectonic Plate

Early 1950s newsreel laboratory marker films used for indicating effects like wipes, dissolves and fade-outs in the work print, now freed from their utilitarian practice into a fantasy realm.

Sad Song of the Hard-Edge Transition Wipe Markers

Woody observation case in Helsinki through early 1950s newsreel footage. Four locations in shots, accompanied by four tape loops and four locked-groove vinyls.

Branches

Finnish filmmaker and artist Sami van Ingen is a great-grandson of documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty, and seemingly the sole member of the family with a hands-on interest in continuing the directing legacy. Among the materials he found in the estate of Robert and Frances Flaherty’s daughter Monica were the film reels and video tapes detailing several years of work on realising her lifelong dream project: a sound version of her parents’ 1926 docu-fiction axiom, Moana: A Romance of the Golden Age.

Monica in the South Seas

A three-week vacation in the middle of a heatwave. Failed Emptiness is an existential thriller that describes the familiar experience of emptiness when responsibilities end.