Year of Production: 2023
Running Time: 4min59s
Shooting Format: Super-8 Film (Kodak Vision3 200T)
Master Format: Quicktime File (4K)
Production of this film has been supported by The Finnish Cultural Foundation, Lapland Regional fund.
Crew:
Panu Johansson: concept, direction, cinematography, editing, sound design
Susannah Louise: Voice-over
SYNOPSIS:
How does it feel to live next to 170 year old creatures? This short impressionistic film documents an old forest area called Mortin männikkö in Rovaniemi, Northern Finland. As an array of glimpses and moments the film tries to summarise a decade of life next to this vivid & forested tableau vivant.
SCREENINGS & EXHIBITIONS:
2025 VASTLAB Experimental VX6, Los Angeles, CA, USA (coming up)
2024 Festival Fotogenia, Mexico City, Mexico
2024 Experimental Superstars Film Festival, Novi Sad, Serbia
2024 Engauge Experimental Film Festival, Seattle, USA
2024 Elevation Film Festival, Maker-with-Rame, UK
2024 Almaty Underground Screening Series, Kazakhstan
2024 aCinema screening, Milwaukee, WI, USA
2024 Tranås at the Fringe International Art Festival, Sweden
2024 Artists’ Association of Lapland Spring Exhibition, Gallery Napa, Rovaniemi, Finland (group exhibition)
2024 Experiments In Cinema Festival, Albuquerque, NM, USA
2024 The West Virginia Mountaineer Short Film Festival, Morgantown, WV, USA
2024 Analog Resistance Festival, Yverdon-les-Bains, Switzerland
2024 Inflamável – Festival de Curtas em Super 8, Florianópolis, Brazil
2023 Trees, Parks, People, Arktikum Science Centre and Museum, Rovaniemi, Finland (group exhibition, more info here)
STILL IMAGES:
Images below are meant for web preview only. Full quality press images can be downloaded here.
Director’s Statement:
In his book “Sculpting in Time”, the Russian film director Andrei Tarkovsky states that he does not see poetry as a genre, but rather as an awareness of the world. For him the cinematic image is essentially an observation of phenomena passing through time. This is something that I strongly relate to.
As a filmmaker I am naturally interested in light. “Who Has Seen the Wind?” has been shot in my hometown of Rovaniemi, which is located on the Arctic Circle in Finland. In High North the variation between different kinds of seasons is drastic: the winters are extremely long and dark, and once the short bright summer arrives, it always feels extra special. I have noticed that these radical shifts have made me somewhat sensitive to the local lighting conditions. First, the vast majority of your time the environment is filled with darkness and shadows. When the same surroundings are suddenly graced by a delicate interplay of light everywhere, it is simply mind boggling. I have always associated Tarkovsky’s discussions on poetic awareness with these glimpses of light in the spring.
When making this film I have tried to catch direct and pure observations of life. The images have no hidden symbolic meanings (if you search for meaning too much, you will miss what is going on). Yet when these images are linked together, they create a coherent whole that from my point of view captures a certain experience. I have also added Christina Rossetti’s poem on the soundtrack for the same reason: it captures a very similar experience and therefore accompanies the rest of the piece without a dissonance.
WHO HAS SEEN THE WIND?
Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.
Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.
– Christina Rossetti, 1872 –
Discussions:
This film was screened as part of The Festival Fotogenia 06 (2024 Edition) in Mexico City, Mexico in November 2024. The festival also arranged several virtual meetings for the artists whose work was included in the fest program. These discucssions were first only included in the paid online edition of Fotogenia, but they are now publicly available. If you want to see me and 9 other artists discuss about film, poetry and the relationship between them, you can now see the 1h40mins session here.
