KYNNYSKINO, the 8th Disability Film Festival
KynnysKINO film festival has been held every second year since 1997. The festival is a forum for novel and alternative points of view presenting vast and astonishing scopes of human mind and body. It is dedicated to all film and video makers who have personal experience on disability.
In 1997, the first KynnysKINO dealt with varying aspects of perfection and imperfection of the image of man. The theme of the KynnysKINO8 2011 was “Dream of flying”. Flying with the wings of a dream, a thought or a vision is an illusion of overcoming the gravity and everything it represents. It offers the sensation of the weightlessness, the enjoyable easiness of the speed, exceeding all the natural and social borders and the weakness of the fleshly body. The spatial distances shrink away, the time slows down and the occurrences become denser, opening up an escape from the suppressive community and the oppressive social control.
The main organiser of the KynnysKINO Festival is Kynnys: the Threshold Association, together with the Finnish National Gallery in Helsinki and the Turku Main Library.
The event was held for the eighth time on March 13 – 17 2011. This year it was held in two locations: Helsinki in Ateneum Hall and the 2011 European Capital of Culture, Turku, in the public Library. The festival was held in non-smoking premises and could accommodate several wheelchairs. Tickets cost 6 € per screening and 30 € for the festival passport which gave access to all the main performances.
In addition to screening feature-length films, special themes this year included animations. Special presentations were also held before the screenings, including a talk by Kaisa Leka about the cartoonist John Callahan. The festival included a film about Callahan entitledTouch Me Someplace I Can Feel (2007). Director of the film, Simone de Vries, was as a festival guest.
On Saturday, translators Sanni Purhonen and Idastiina Räsänen led a discussion about Richard Rieser's book Disabling Imagery: A Teaching Guide to Disability and Moving Image Media. Richard Rieser’s book is the first of its kind and was published this spring in Finnish by Into Kustannus.
The film festival programme included the new Finnish feature filmVähän kunnioitusta("Little Respect" 2010)by Pekka Karjalainen, as well as a diverse selection of international offerings from Spain, Germany, the UK, Australia and elsewhere.
The KynnysKINO competition series in 2011 was interesting with films from all over the world. Local film makers had increased the standards remarkably compared to previous years. The jury praised the film Eskimo Kiss, because the interesting storyline, the delicate work of the actors and its music. The film as a whole was beautiful but especially in its direction. It was unanimously elected as the winner.
A domestic film, titled Love You, caught the attention because of its direction and music. It was awarded the second prize. The jury encouraged the director to maintain her personal touch in her work.
KynnysKINO 2011-category of the competition prizes was awarded as follows:
1st place (1000 €) Eskimo Kiss (dir. Dustin Feneley, Australia)
2nd place (500 €) Love You (dir. Miss compromises, Finland)
In addition, the jury awarded two honourable mentions to films In Wonderland (Great Britain), and Everyday Story (Hungary).
For more information take a look at the website http://www.kynnyskino.info.
