Something happens – four short films

Sat 27^th February 2-3pm at Arthouse Cinema Niagara, Tampere

Four poetic films about atmospheres. The films born intuitively – by yielding to that what aroused in the process. The films you cannot rationalize and which do not reflect anything particular, but which, exactly therefore, have a potential to awaken you for deeper understanding and to connect with that which is present in this very moment.

Something happens is a film event organized by Tampere Art Education Association and which presents four short films by Markku Hakala and Raisa Foster:
I am You – by Markku Hakala
Sounds of Grey – by Raisa Foster
Matkaopas – by Markku Hakala
I Shall Not Suffer – by Raisa Foster & Markku Hakala

I have used the method of dance animateuring in the creation of the two films Sounds of Grey and I Shall Not Suffer. The starting points for the films were: 1) to investigate and bring front the quality of so-called “weak performer” (opposite to charismatic, skillful, and others that are normally valued), and 2) to let meanings to emerge from “in-between” (opposite to subject/object division), in other words to avoid the psychologization of individual subjectivity and also the pretense of universal symbolization.

The collaborative creative process of film making also challenges the idea of “possessive individualism” (Macpherson 1962), the concept of human as “I own therefore I am”. The modernist idea of film maker and/or its performers as the owners of the film and its meanings is abandoned. In contrast, the film invites multiple meanings to arise and thus requires active participation from its audience.

The idea of dance animateuring is to encourage everyone to find their own way of moving and to express by movements. The film created in the process of dance animateuring presents a performer which presence and expression is “undemanding”. The use of pedestrian movements is common, but even if the movements are antiexpressive – abstract in the sense that they go beyond everyday moves – they still give an impression of effortlessness.

The films aim to show, how the meanings of an art work are not based on just semiotics. The film does not aim to present artistic symbols (in the form of dance steps and choreography) which are based on the artist’s intentions and which are pointing to some particular and coherent meaning. In contrast, meanings emerge from elements that go beyond the (human) subjectivity and were not in control of the (human) makers of the film: in other words, from the movements of plants, light and shadow, rain, an empty chair and a room, train tracks, staircase, colors, sounds.

Something happens celebrates the ineffability of artistic meaning. All the four films bring front the idea of “holistic affective experience”. Another concept to describe this kind of phenomenon is “atmosphere” which points to a state where everything is interconnected. (See also Vadén & Torvinen 2014.) Atmosphere occurs as a primary experience and it shows the world as it is, and not through concepts and representations of it (see also Klemola 2005). The films are not illustrations of life, but they have a life of their own.