Tectonic Plate, a camera-less lettrist feature film by Mika Taanila has been selected for the 66th Berlinale. It is screening in Forum Expanded on February 15 & 16, 2016.
Monday 15 Feb 19:00 Akademie der Künste (world premiere)
Tuesday 16 Feb 17:30 Kino Arsenal 1
Text by Harry Salmenniemi, English translation by Lola Rogers, original score by Mika Vainio, graphic design by Markus Pyörälä, sound design by Olli Huhtanen, produced by Jussi Eerola for Elokuvayhtiö Testifilmi Oy.
Return of the Atom, feature documentary by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola is screening as DocPoint, Helsinki Documentary Film Festival. The screening is with English subtitles and takes place in a new venue, Korjaamo Kulmasali at Saturday evening , January 30, at 20:00, accompanied with an Q&A.
Return of the Atom, feature documentary by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola has been selected among the eight films competing for the Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary at Göteborg Film Festival, Sweden. The film is screening three times during the festival.
The short film Futuro – A New Stance for Tomorrow (1998, 28 min) is part of the show Golden Generation. Modernism in Finnish Architecture and Design in St. Petersburg. The film runs non-stop on a monitor setting with Russian subtitles at The State Hermitage Museum from 14 November 2015 until 31 January 2016.
Return of the Atom (Atomin paluu) is a feature documentary film by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola.
Finland was the first country in the west to give permission to build a new nuclear power plant after the Chernobyl disaster (1986). The OL3 plant in Eurajoki is being built by the French nuclear company Areva and was supposed to be ready in five years (2004–2009), being a calling card for nuclear industry’s second coming globally. However, the project has faced serious problems in planning, construction and safety automation. The project is delayed over nine years at the moment. The film portrays the strange and stressful life in a small “nuclear town” during an era of nuclear renaissance. There’s hardly any anti-nuclear resistance in Eurajoki, which creates a tense, unspoken consensus amongst local inhabitants and leaves room for paranoid scenarios.
In November 2015 Return of the Atom was presented the NORDIC:DOX Award for Best Nordic Feature Documentary.
Jury statement:
“The winner of the 2015 CPH DOX Nordic award is Return Of The Atom, directed by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola. Shot over eight years by the Finnish duo, Return Of The Atom looks at how the bureaucratic might of a massive scale European construction project impacts on the inhabitants of a small community. With clarity and sense of purpose, Return Of The Atom convincingly travels through the broad scales and global registers of the ramifications of building nuclear power stations in a post-Chernobyl world where decisions made by one nation or group can be potentially fatal for everyone else on our shared planet. From the individual characters who are confronted with a choice to either embrace the financial rewards of living in a nuclear town or try to resist the environmental and health dangers harnessing the atom brings, to the lazy and entropic bureaucratic labyrinth that accompanies such a megalithic project, Return Of The Atom is in turns sensitive, satirical, critical and bemused, taking a complex, rarely discussed topic and creating a serious but engaging, subtle and poised film.”
In February 2016 Pan sonic received The Jussi Award for the Best Film Score in 2015 (Return of the Atom).
Return of the Atom. Photo by Jussi Eerola / Kinotar
To celebrate the UK launch of Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 (MIT), edited by Jussi Parikka and Joasia Krysa, LUX and BIMI present a screening event with Future Is Not What It Used To Be (2002, d. Mika Taanila) and Spindrift (1966/2013, Jan Bark & Erkki Kurenniemi)
In the presence of Mika Taanila, professor Jussi Parikka (Winchester School of Art), Dr Joasia Krysa (Liverpool John Moores University/Liverpool Biennale) and Dr. Matthew Fuller (Director of the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths University).
The screening will have an introduction and a Q&A with Mika Taanila, followed by a reception.
Friday 15th January 2016, 6pm
Birkbeck Cinema, 43 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PD
Return of the Atom, feature documentary by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola is screening as Lens Politica Festival. The screening is with English subtitles at cinema Andorra on Saturday November 21 at 13:30, accompanied with an Q&A.
Atomin paluu (“Return of the Atom”), feature documentary by Mika Taanila and Jussi Eerola is screening as Lens Politica Festival’s sneak preview prior to Finnish theatrical release. The screening (with Finnish subtitles) is at Kino Sheryl on Tuesday November 3 at 18:00, accompanied with an Q&A.
