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Niina Oisalo
I hold a Masters in International Relations (University of Tampere, Finland) and in Documentary Practice (Brunel University London). Currently I'm working on my PhD research at the University of Turku (Finland), titled: "Documentary imagination: performing living memory in contemporary Nordic documentary".
In the project, documentary is approached as a mnemonic practice. Through seven contemporary films, I look into the ways in which contemporary Nordic documentary films remix memory material while tackling difficult pasts related to war, colonialism or the feeling of non-belonging. In the performance, the films expend their grasp of imagination and agency from the past to the future. The films bring out people and experiences that have been left in the shadows of cultural memory. I explore documentary film as a way to reclaim, redeem, replay and recreate the past.
The research brings together documentary film studies and memory studies, but also postcolonial and indigenous studies.
I have recently written about Sámi autobiographical films and reclaiming lost memory in Sámi documentary, documentary representation of women who fled Finland with German soldiers during WWII and about cinematic worlding - documentary filmmmaking as a method for searching to belong.
Besides research, I also work as a freelance writer and filmmaker.
Supervisors: Jukka Sihvonen and Ilona Hongisto
In the project, documentary is approached as a mnemonic practice. Through seven contemporary films, I look into the ways in which contemporary Nordic documentary films remix memory material while tackling difficult pasts related to war, colonialism or the feeling of non-belonging. In the performance, the films expend their grasp of imagination and agency from the past to the future. The films bring out people and experiences that have been left in the shadows of cultural memory. I explore documentary film as a way to reclaim, redeem, replay and recreate the past.
The research brings together documentary film studies and memory studies, but also postcolonial and indigenous studies.
I have recently written about Sámi autobiographical films and reclaiming lost memory in Sámi documentary, documentary representation of women who fled Finland with German soldiers during WWII and about cinematic worlding - documentary filmmmaking as a method for searching to belong.
Besides research, I also work as a freelance writer and filmmaker.
Supervisors: Jukka Sihvonen and Ilona Hongisto
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In this article, cinematic memory in El escarabajo de oro o Victorias Hämnd is delineated through the performative gestures of reenactment and voice-over narration as aesthetic strategies that promote a non-linear, multidirectional perception of remembering. I suggest that the film offers an alternative way to approach cinematic memory, not attaching the act of remembering to an individual, a group or a nation, but to the film form itself. The film engenders cinematic memory as a living constellation, where diverse historical temporalities exist simultaneously and interact freely. In the film, cinematic memory is constantly being created and recreated in the here and now.
- Liminal space, embodiment and encounter in the Finnish documentary films Ghosts and Neighbours
The article opens up ways to think about embodiment and encounter in the liminal spaces of refugee centre and suburban multicultural tenement. The Finnish documentary films Ghosts (Finland 2009, directed by Jan Ijäs) and Neighbours (Finland 2013, director Tuija Halttunen) focus on the transnational space where the relations between people and space are constantly on the move, challenging the national ‘order of things’. Here the borderlines between cultures and nationalities become difficult to discern and their nature as dynamic processes becomes tangible.
The vernacular and bodily transnational encounters in the films Ghosts and Neighbours convey in a very concrete way the negotiations between different cultural regimes and the experience of living in a multicultural world. The liminality experienced on the borderline is not only a crippling or constraining feeling, but in this threshold the ‘lived worlds’ of different cultures energise each other, dissolve into one another and form new hybrids. I am interested in what happens on the threshold in these particular films: in the realms of a refugee centre and a suburban multicultural apartment building where lived lives destabilise the ‘national space’. Films conveying the transnational experience, like Ghosts and Neighbours, can act as political agents while triggering the imagination and opening up new ways to see the world – perhaps with a cosmopolitan hue.
In this article I formulate a phenomenologically inspired analysis of the thresholds observable in the films and complement this analysis with interpretations of the cinematic techniques and the ethical considerations relevant to the documentary films’ transnational nature. In the films analysed, the thresholds are ‘occupied’ by human bodies transmitting the attitudes, emotions and meanings in the transnational and -cultural negotiations. The gesticulating bodies also form a bond between the film and the spectator, for example through the presence of the cinematographer.
Tämän henkilökohtaisen dokumenttielokuvan ”uuden aallon” edustajista moni opiskeli 1990-luvun alussa Taideteollisessa korkeakoulussa, ja pääsi siellä nauttimaan esimerkiksi fiktiivisistä keinoista ammentavan dokumenttielokuvan kanadalaisen gurun Philip Hoffmanin opetuksesta. Dokumenttielokuvaa alettiin samaan aikaan pitää yhä vahvemmin taiteenalana ja erottaa ”luova dokumenttielokuva” (creative documentary) esimerkiksi televisiodokumenteista, joita hallitsi journalistinen näkemys.
Römpötti itse näkee kirjansa eräänlaisena jatkona Ilkka Kippolan ja Jari Sedergrenin suomalaisen dokumenttielokuvan historiaa kartoittaneille Dokumentin ytimessä (2009) ja Dokumentin utopiat (2015), joiden tarkastelu päättyy juuri 1980-luvun loppuun. Vaikkei kirja olekaan varsinainen historiikki, kuten Kippolan ja Sedergrenin teokset, se on arvokas lisä keskusteluun suomalaisen dokumenttielokuvan menneisyydestä, nykyhetkestä ja tulevaisuudesta.
The paper was presented at the concerence Ethics of Storytelling, in June 2015, Turku, Finland.
In this article, cinematic memory in El escarabajo de oro o Victorias Hämnd is delineated through the performative gestures of reenactment and voice-over narration as aesthetic strategies that promote a non-linear, multidirectional perception of remembering. I suggest that the film offers an alternative way to approach cinematic memory, not attaching the act of remembering to an individual, a group or a nation, but to the film form itself. The film engenders cinematic memory as a living constellation, where diverse historical temporalities exist simultaneously and interact freely. In the film, cinematic memory is constantly being created and recreated in the here and now.
- Liminal space, embodiment and encounter in the Finnish documentary films Ghosts and Neighbours
The article opens up ways to think about embodiment and encounter in the liminal spaces of refugee centre and suburban multicultural tenement. The Finnish documentary films Ghosts (Finland 2009, directed by Jan Ijäs) and Neighbours (Finland 2013, director Tuija Halttunen) focus on the transnational space where the relations between people and space are constantly on the move, challenging the national ‘order of things’. Here the borderlines between cultures and nationalities become difficult to discern and their nature as dynamic processes becomes tangible.
The vernacular and bodily transnational encounters in the films Ghosts and Neighbours convey in a very concrete way the negotiations between different cultural regimes and the experience of living in a multicultural world. The liminality experienced on the borderline is not only a crippling or constraining feeling, but in this threshold the ‘lived worlds’ of different cultures energise each other, dissolve into one another and form new hybrids. I am interested in what happens on the threshold in these particular films: in the realms of a refugee centre and a suburban multicultural apartment building where lived lives destabilise the ‘national space’. Films conveying the transnational experience, like Ghosts and Neighbours, can act as political agents while triggering the imagination and opening up new ways to see the world – perhaps with a cosmopolitan hue.
In this article I formulate a phenomenologically inspired analysis of the thresholds observable in the films and complement this analysis with interpretations of the cinematic techniques and the ethical considerations relevant to the documentary films’ transnational nature. In the films analysed, the thresholds are ‘occupied’ by human bodies transmitting the attitudes, emotions and meanings in the transnational and -cultural negotiations. The gesticulating bodies also form a bond between the film and the spectator, for example through the presence of the cinematographer.
Tämän henkilökohtaisen dokumenttielokuvan ”uuden aallon” edustajista moni opiskeli 1990-luvun alussa Taideteollisessa korkeakoulussa, ja pääsi siellä nauttimaan esimerkiksi fiktiivisistä keinoista ammentavan dokumenttielokuvan kanadalaisen gurun Philip Hoffmanin opetuksesta. Dokumenttielokuvaa alettiin samaan aikaan pitää yhä vahvemmin taiteenalana ja erottaa ”luova dokumenttielokuva” (creative documentary) esimerkiksi televisiodokumenteista, joita hallitsi journalistinen näkemys.
Römpötti itse näkee kirjansa eräänlaisena jatkona Ilkka Kippolan ja Jari Sedergrenin suomalaisen dokumenttielokuvan historiaa kartoittaneille Dokumentin ytimessä (2009) ja Dokumentin utopiat (2015), joiden tarkastelu päättyy juuri 1980-luvun loppuun. Vaikkei kirja olekaan varsinainen historiikki, kuten Kippolan ja Sedergrenin teokset, se on arvokas lisä keskusteluun suomalaisen dokumenttielokuvan menneisyydestä, nykyhetkestä ja tulevaisuudesta.
The paper was presented at the concerence Ethics of Storytelling, in June 2015, Turku, Finland.