The 2nd Nordic Film Festival opens tonight and will run until 4th December at venues including the ICA, Riverside Studios, and Ciné Lumière, with a varied programme to celebrate film-making from the Nordic countries. This will include an Other Side Of The Docs strand featuring UK premieres of Andreas Johnsen’s Kidd Life (Denmark, 2012), Mika Ronkainen’s Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart (Finland/Sweden 2012), and Petri Luukkainen’s My Stuff (Finland 2012).
My Stuff / Tavarataivas (Petri Luukkainen, 2013)
Petri Luukkainen, the director and star of his film My Stuff, searches for meaning and happiness by stripping himself, both literally and figuratively, of his belongings, and only taking one item out of storage per day.
This experiment explores his relationships with objects, friends, and family, in order to arrive at what’s missing in his life. Luukkainen obsessively films his own life, or is filmed by others, and the initially phone-less project soon causes friction in his friendships, where for a while, it seems like our protagonist’s diary project itself, like in David Holzman’s Diary, could be taking away from its own goal. That is until Petri’s story gets bigger fish to fry.
Inserts of Finnish life work alongside Petri’s experiment to highlight the country that plays host to the film. Ice hockey victories bring on public euphoria, Petri’s friend receives a state-provided baby box after becoming a father, and while the film’s themes of sustainable living, life and death are universal, these Finnish elements are added as a somewhat self-conscious cultural reference in the film.
As part of the festival, Petri Luukkainen and Mika Ronkainen (Finnish Blood, Swedish Heart) will be giving London a rare chance to hear about the current state of Finnish documentary film-making on Monday 2nd December 2013. See the website for more information.
REELING THE REAL 