Those Who Kept the Light

Those Who Kept the Light

Nastja Säde Rönkkö

NO / FI / DK
2022
10-Kanal-Videoinstallation
Audience Award

Poems entwine images: seaweed pledges of love, longing for rocky landscapes, mermaid mourning and recurring maritime facets of light. Video works by Nastja Säde Rönkkö become stanzas that attempt to capture the magic that surrounds the coasts of the sea. The lighthouse and its keepers, previously associated with masculinity, are transformed into queer-feminist spaces on the edge of a vulnerable ecosystem. Humans and landscape are closer here than we realise. Their dependencies slowly become visible in fragments. We are shown a young artist trying to hone her own perception of her environment and to find a language for a time in which losses no longer only have individual consequences, but voids in human attentiveness lead to habitats being violated. With a sustained rhythmic energy, the ideas seem to fly to her in the cinematic realisation, new references are constantly embedded in the compositions in a playful way without becoming unclear. Excursions into marine biology or painting are cleverly intertwined and then let loose again as in a melodious score. This installation almost makes you feel as if you are listening to the sound of sirens that will never let you go.

Director / Script

Nastja Säde Rönkkö

Cinematography

Aake Kivalo, Iris Kärkkäinen

Editing

Heli Kota

Sound Design

Janne Masalin

Music

Timo Kaukolampi

Production

Tönne von Christierson’s Foundation, AVEK, The Finnish-Norwegian Cultural Institute, Nordisk Kulturfond, The Finnish Cultural Institute in Denmark

Contact

AV-arkki

Portrait of Nastja Säde Römkkö

Nastja Säde Rönkkö

Nastja Säde Rönkkö is a video, performance, installation and text artist. In her work, she explores the relationship between the digital age, power balances and humanity in relation to the future of the earth. Love or slowness can become a quiet activism of great influence in this process. The poetics of emotions are a recurring theme in her work. Her work has been shown in North America, Spain, Italy and England, and film festivals such as the Tampere Short Film Festival, the Lago Film Festival and the NYC Indie Awards have also presented her films.


Films by  Nastja Säde Rönkkö
Survival Guide for a Post-Apocalyptic Child 2022 | 6 Months Without 2019 | A Seal Story 2019 | How to Skin a Polar Bear 2019 | Milk and Decay 2019 | Take Me Anywhere 2016