Vilnius Diary 8
Finnish filmmaker and teacher at the film school Helsinki Polytechnic, Heikki Ahola, brought some student films and a couple of his own films to the summer camp. They were, as Ahola, very Finnish if I may put it like that. Not many words, original approach, and high quality. ”Rhytm” from 2003 was presented as a new version of ”Night Mail”, ”Telakka” from 2002 was a time-lapse film shot over a year from a sluice, both of them short and with excellent and precise editing. His own works were both with stylistical references to early film history. One was about a train arriving to the station, the other ”The Case of an Unemployed”, a short fiction on a documentary background: A man goes to park and while other feed the ducks, he catches one to bring it back for dinner!
Ahola also brought the beautiful film of Sonja Lindén, ”No Man is an Island”, a film that I have enjoyed before for its unsentimental description of a man, who lives alone on an island, does what is to be done to make the day pass in a nice way, talks to the cat, listen to jazz and Mahler – and handwrites in detail what is to be done and thought about concerning the house when he has died. It is both a bit funny and also very touching, as is first of all his morning phone conversations with his wife, who lives away from the island as she needs to be taken care of because of her MS.
Sonja Lindén: No Man is an Island. Finland, 2006. 40 mins.
