Kanerva Cederström & Riikka Tanner, Still from TRANS-AMERIKA
HIPPOLYTE STUDIO
Yrjönkatu 8–10 (courtyard), 00120 Helsinki, Finland, +358 9 612 33 44, www.hippolyte.fi
Open: Tue–Fri 12–17, Sat–Sun 12–16
6–29 September 2013
Kanerva Cederström & Riikka Tanner
TRANS-AMERIKA
Chamber Film
A discussion “Time and Place in Film” on Wednesday 11 September, at 5 p.m.
Participants: Kanerva Cederström, Kari Yli-Annala and Jaakko Ruuska. The discussion is in Finnish.
”I’m going to America, that’s where everyone goes…”
In 1998 Kanerva Cederström directed the film TRANS-SIBERIA, which was shot on a train during a trip from Moscow to Vladivostok, near the Pacific coast. It was a journey through the Siberian landscape and memory, guided by letters and notes written by two people in Siberian prison camps and convoys.
Ten years later Kanerva Cederström and Riikka Tanner set out on a train ride through a different continent, across The United States of America, contemplating the same enigma: How to convey the experience of time and place, how to define a continent, its history and the nature, its people and cities? Just for a blink of an eye, can the continent become an island between the oceans?
A ride on a train is a tracking shot of thousands of kilometres. Train windows at night are like the squares of a film spool. Nights and days, interior and exterior, the distance, the stagnation and the speed are elements of a train movie. What do we see and remember?
TRANS-AMERIKA was shot at the end of the summer 2009 on a Brooklyn beach and on the island of Manhattan, on a train from New York to San Francisco and at Ocean Beach, San Francisco. The audio journey was created using the continent’s sounds and music forgotten in archives, as well as Riikka Tanner’s notes.
The installation consists of a 40-minute film, a photo, a soundtrack and a textual piece. The viewer can ”step on” the train at any point during the film.
Planning and Screenplay: Kanerva Cederström, Riikka Tanner
Cinematography: Kanerva Cederström, DV Film: Riikka Tanner
Sound: Riikka Tanner
Sound editing: Kanerva Cederström
Notes: Riikka Tanner
Singing: Monna Kamu
Kanerva Cederström (b. 1949) is a Helsinki-based film director, whose career consists of over 20 documentaries and essay films. Her works are characterized by themes concerning memory and the passing of time as well as a close relationship with literature and visual arts. Cederström has worked as a Professor of Documentary Film at the University of Art and Design in Helsinki between 2003-2010. In 2001 she received the Finnish State Award for Film.
Riikka Tanner (b. 1949) is a journalist, a non-fiction author and a filmmaker living and working in Helsinki. Her works in the field of literature include the books Linda kulkee keskellä tietä (2005) and Käheä-ääninen tyttö (2009).
Cederström and Tanner began working together in the 1980’s, when they co-wrote and co-directed the documentary film Genius Loci (1986). Among other works directed together are the film Jobless Days (1994) and the documentaries Haru – The Island of the Solitary (1998) and Tove and Tooti in Europe (2004), which are based on Tove Jansson’s narrow-film material.