HIFF and MasQue

I’ve been visiting two festivals during this week in Helsinki.

On Thursday, I had my “Lost Persons Area” at the MasQue festival (www.metamorfoosi.com) in STOA. I think it went really well considering it was made some two years ago. And the light design was not bad, considering the state of mind and lack of experience I once made it in. Got even this girl thanking me after the show for a great visual experience. O yeah.
As the festival staff, I got to see other performances as well. I think I’m starting to get the point of commedia dell’arte. A simple and pure form of entertainment it is. No, I don’t laugh at the slapstick stuff yet. But the beauty of the so physical characters is clearing a bit. And it’s a form which a lighting ramp really suits. Even with a draped background nearby – gives it a DavidLynch’ish touch.

As I am meeting Liisa Lehmusto from Helsinki Film Festival (www.hiff.fi) on Tuesday, I got some tickets to the screenings to get acquainted with the venues. On Friday after the night visit to the Zoo (yes, they keep it open until midnight some days a year – I’ve never seen lions and tigers so close!) we went to see “Triangle”. I think Taavi slept most of the screening. The term “sausage” would describe the movie very well. As the middle, beginning and end are all done by different directors, there are no peaks or valleys, some action with the same dudes just goes on and on.. Okay, the end part had some good comedy moments. Some. And the lighting was nice in the beginning. Ah, who am I kidding. Why did they have it in the “Selection Semi-officielle”?

Last night I saw the romantic comedy “Like a Dragon” by master Miike. Yes, this is my kind of entertainment. I’ts amusing, it’s funny, it’s got it going. With a “Night of the Kings” just behind me, I have to compare the ultimately refined characters to those of the commedia. Having so expressive personalites I’m not even sure what was exactly happening in the script. But there’s no questions you need to ask. Eventually most of them die (violently!) and the hero rises from the ashes. The audience laughs and applaudes and everybody is happy. It’s just awesome to see a good, quality action movie that focuses on people instead of expensive special effects.

And now I’ve just been amazed by the mexican “Ano Una” (both n’s with the wavy tilde on top). This guy Jonas Cuaron was taking pictures of his girlfriend and his brother for a year and made up a fictional story including them as characters afterwards. Then he stacked the photos one after another into a slideshow and had the protagonists record made-up dialogues to complete the movie. And the result is just great! The story is really good and the lack of movement makes it so documentary, somehow more real than a regular 24fps movie.

Light and sound of dance – introductory workshops 18-20.09

Oh yes. In the mornings we had dance and voice improvisations. I got so excited lost in the movements it was something amazing. It is unbelievable how much pleasure and joy one can take from just wiggling around on the floor with eyes closed. I had such flashbacks from the time I went to dance school my heart jumped with joy. With sound improvisations I, always and again, have the heureka-feeling about the agreed-on language in any group – you find a dialogue with someone through beeping and burping and making lalala-sounds and in that very moment it makes as much sense as a normal conversation. If you make an interesting sound, people start singing with you, if you cannot go with someone else, you might stay alone with your tu-tu-tu. And when everyone is a bit lost what we are conversating about, it’s great to take the lead with a BOOOOOOO and hear everyone relievingly cooperate into making it a bigger BOO. It’s just the same as “I’d like to hear your views on the economical situation in Eastern Asia” and “yo nigga, wazzaaa”. It’s just easier to see the patterns when you keep the contents in the abstract lu-la-li-la-simplicity level. Group dynamics once again.

In the afternoons we had short plays in groups. A couple of hours to generate and 10 minutes to perform. And it always surprises me how limitless the fantasy mind of a human being can be. One day we’re taking stands in global politics, pretending to speak chinese, russian, arabian and american, the other day I’m sitting on a chair in the schoolyard, doing slow-motion choreography and shouting “NYT” into a megaphone with all the office people passing by as it’s 5 p.m. I think anyone normal would find this embarrassing. Maybe it’s an art to find it beautiful and meaningful like we do. Ideas of Joseph Conrad put into my head in high school, I know.

Now we’re divided into four groups, I get to work with Sofia Tsolis. It’s a challenge for it seems we have quite different ways of expressing our thoughts. Must be patient not to get frustrated by her thinking out loud and must know that I cannot end a sentence short myself sometimes. I know I’m short-tempered with long-talking people. I know.

We’re expected to make up our minds what we’re gonna do in January by October the 11th. This means that I’m going to.. travel back and fourth to Helsinki for a two-hour meeting about three times a week. Shit :)

28-31.08 Lighting and sound for dance – opening seminar

This was a weird series of lectures – two hours per day – introducing the fields about to work together on the dance project in autumn and winter. I swear it would have made a great one-day-seminar. Now I had to hang out in Helsinki for a whole week to hear out these seven hours of speech. Kira was kind enough to let me stay at her place, but that made me even more pissed about spending the daily 5eur for bus trips from Lauttasaari. Still, compared to the previous week’s sleeping on the office floor of the Estonian Institute, her mattress was a luxurious experience. Kira is a choreographer. We showed each other photos and videos of what kind of work we’d done so far and got along very well. I’ts a pity she’s not going to participate in the course any further – there are too many students in her year and only four dance pieces get done. She’ll do a dance piece in Stadia instead. Because of the great getting along (and maybe some of the red wines and ciders) I slept off most of the sound lecture on Wednesday. Seems that others didn’t enjoy it either, as the number of participants reduced to half on the next day. Eventually it was okay to have the days free for computer work and nothing else to do in Helsinki. But really, I’d have rather enjoyed embarrassing social games to get to know each other than listen to the teachers TELL us “what is dance”. I don’t believe in lecture type of studies when one can’t give examples the audience can interact with.

20-24.08 Group Dynamics

I half hated and half loved this seminar. The participants were the people about to take part in the big autumn project “Lighting and sound for dance” – choreographers and our technical people. The program was a auditorium blaa-di-bla about the theoretical side of group activities in the art field. A real agony to bear, as I am not a very i-love-people-person. There was a lot of exercises where one had to make a decision or have a thought and then present in to others. I was so panicking about defining myself that I never bothered to hear what anyone else had to say about themselves (and there were many to hear). It seemed everyone was saying the same empty words as I did just to get it over with. Inside my head, nevertheless, the thoughts made quite sense. In the excercise, where one had to walk into the most suitable place for oneself in the room, having one wall for solitude and the other for groupwork, the third for dominance and the fourth for manipulativeness. At first I tucked myself into the furthest solitude-dominance corner. Afterwards I thought about what I had to say about my standing point and found it quite peacocking. I’m not really that bitchy as I like to pretend. At the film festival (I’m a volunteer manager at such) people refer to me as a great personnell director. But it’s true – I love to lead the group, not to be led by anyone more stupid than me. An interesting thing – when opening the seminar, people were told to mention a word that connects with “group”. Everyone was coming up with “together” and “innovativeness” and other nice hand-holding things. I said that a group needs a strong leader. Seems like I am fond of strong personalities. Yes, I do get nervous with everybody sitting around all day deciding everything together. Jenni came up with a lovely phrase – in groupwork we exist for each other, everyone does their own thing so others won’t have to worry about it.

My new blog

My name is Johanna and I’m a light design student. In this blog I intend to post things and thoughts having to do with my work and studies. I recall something about a personal study diary in my master’s degree study guide. I think this could very well be the thing.

I live in Tallinn (Estonia) and study in Helsinki (Finland). It’s my fifth year in the Theatre Academy (www.teak.fi) studying theatre lighting. I got my bachelor’s degree in 2006, now I’m working on the MA.