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Finnish artist filmmaker Mika Taanila occupies a point on the threshold between documentary, avant-garde film and video art. Fascinated by skewed futures, he presents here the major part of a London mid-career survey.
In a career dominated by the recuperation of technology and ‘progress’ from consumer ideologies, Mika Taanila is the celluloid-wielding soothsayer of Nordic moving image; a key proponent and unparalleled forebear of ‘post-cinema’.
With Mika Taanila and Chris Petit in a conversation moderated by Olaf Möller. Introduction by Stanley Schtinter.
More information: http://purge.xxx/mika
SAD SONG OF THE HARD-EDGE TRANSITION WIPE MARKERS (3m, 2017)
DELAY OF GAME (5m, 2017)
BRANCHES (6m, 2017)
THE WORLD (7m, 2017)
VERBRANNTES LAND (6m, 2002)
ROBOCUP (25m, 2000)
SIX DAY RUN (14m, 2013)
OPTICAL SOUND (6m, 2005)
A PHYSICAL RING (5m, 2002)
TECTONIC PLATE (1h14m, 2016)
Mika Taanila (b. 1965) is a filmmaker and visual artist based in Helsinki.
Taanila’s works have been shown at major international group shows, such as Aichi Triennale (2013), Documenta (2012), Shanghai Biennale (2006), Berlin Biennale (2004), Manifesta (2002). Solo shows include Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki (2013–14), Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (2013), TENT, Rotterdam (2013), Galleria Heino, Helsinki (2010), Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2008), Dazibao, Montréal (2007) and Migrosmuseum, Zurich (2005). His films have been screened at international film festivals and special events, including Toronto International Film Festival, IFFR Rotterdam, International Short Film Festival Clermont-Ferrand, Karlovy-Vary Film Festival, Midnight Sun Film Festival, CPH:DOX IDFA Amsterdam and Oberhausen Kurzfilmtage. He was the recipient of the Ars Fennica Award in 2015.
Return of The Atom, a documentary feature directed by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola, premiered at Toronto International Film Festival. Tectonic Plate, a cameraless lettrist feature premiered in 2016 at 66th International Berlin Filmfestspiele.
Chris Petit is an internationally renowned English filmmaker and author whose prolific film career covers 35mm feature films, mainstream television, action and documentary to the avant garde and sustained digital experiment. He is regarded as a leading exponent of the film essay, a status confirmed by major retrospectives in Europe and South America. He is also a critic and the author of six novels, five published in the US.
Olaf Möller lives in Cologne, writes about and programs films.” It’s a typically modest blurb that appears at the end of innumerable articles for international film magazines but behind it lie countless texts for festival catalogs, regular columns in Cinema Scope and Film Comment (where Möller has also served as a European editor since 2004), annual festival reports from Berlin, Venice, Rotterdam and Udine, books on filmmakers such as John Cook and Michael Pilz, selection duties for the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen and curatorial work on retrospectives and film programs for the Austrian Film Museum. He also happens to be the Other First Secretary and Minister of Spirituality of the Ferroni Brigade.
Stanley Schtinter is chief curator at the Museo de la Bomba, founder of the Liberated Film Club, and CE, MD and RD of purge.xxx
