Up And About Again

by

Maarit Suomi-Väänänen

October 29 – December 3, 2011

Opening Reception

Media Release (PDF)

Still, Up And About Again, 2009

Up And About Again |  JALKEILLA TAAS

Written and directed by Maarit Suomi-Väänänen

Film, 9 min 49 sec, colour, 2009, Finland

Synopsis:

 Up And About Again is a short film about negotiating the road of life. Dreamlike and surrealist images depict a saloon car driving, covered in a thick layer of snow and ice, through a summer landscape. Something inexplicable has turned an otherwise ordinary day upside down.

Director´s statement

Up And About Again is an abstract depiction of an inner feeling. The car, as protagonist, is a metaphor for people. The film makes visual the experience of otherness, of something that seems to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But it can also be seen as dealing with depression, dependency, or even the lot of the refugee: the loss of self-esteem, alienation from friends and relatives and the future. The pain is hidden. In spite of the car's broken-down state, there is something dignified in its countenance. Although the car is “broken”, it stays on track. It makes it in the end.

 The film can also be seen as a symbolic coming-of-age story in which the protagonist is born in a narcissistic, destructive and barren stony wilderness. The car continues its journey to a ramshackle and abandoned service station where it fills itself up aggressively and jubilantly. Eventually the car makes it to an ethereal and deep-green forest of moss. In the forest the car loses a wheel, which remains spinning on the road. It does not escape undented, but its journey goes on.

 The main character of this dream-like film is a snow-covered Datsun 100A driving through a summer landscape. There is a visual and logical conflict between the main character and the time of year, an incongruity which gives rise to drama and tension. The film is dominated by a state of emergency and exceptional circumstances. Is that most politically correct of topics "the weather" becoming politically incorrect along with a changing climate?

 In the film, a car is crashed and defit/anti-tuned. The film is imbued with a concentrated but broken atmosphere, apparently peaceful but under pressure. The inner experience is abstracted into poetic images with the aid of special effects, pyrotechnics and slow motion. The dense exhaust fumes left in the wake of the snowbound car trace a swathe through the landscape like that of a brushstroke on a painter's canvas. The enormous extent to which the car is covered in snow is revealed little by little. The film’s soundtrack is made up of both cool and ambient sounds composed for the work as well as carefully chosen pieces of vinyl, hardcore punk from Kohu-63. The dream-like and logic-defying events enhance the feeling of fantasy and unusual goings on.

 Translation: David Mitchell

 BIO

Maarit Suomi-Väänänen (MA) works as a filmmaker and media artist. Her work also encompasses photography and installations. Praised as fascinating and open to a multitude of interpretations, Suomi-Väänänen’s award winning works are shown at exhibitions, festivals, on TV as well as on the Internet and at happenings. Up and About Again has been screened in 23 countries world wide. She belongs to the Vidéothèque Nomade (BE), and AV-arkki (FI). Maarit lives in Helsinki and worked with the artists’ stipendium granted by Finnish Cultural Foundations.

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