Danai Anagnostou (b. 1993, Athens) is a Producer for Film, Media & Live Art based in Helsinki. She is the Curator for the Society of Cinema the Museum of Impossible Forms. In 2020, Anagnostou began her Doctoral Studies at Aalto University, School of Film, Television, and Scenography, where she studies hybrid models for production, curation, and education in the field of filmmaking.
Into the midnight sun season, the newest practice of mine is to take note of the mild everyday episodes that occur through physical contact:
A dog bit my thigh and a little mauve bruise appeared the next day. The last time I laid on someone’s stomach, they burped silently, and I was astonished when their breath began to smell like potato onions. Touching nettles gives me hives, but there is an open tab on my internet browser with a recipe for a dense and dark stinging nettle soup.
A friend texted me a link for a poem by Ocean Vuong today, where I read that only music rhymes with music1. We are planning to meet at a festival in November. Now it’s June and the sunlight enters the room at 04:00 AM each day, while I am dreaming of completing phases and making sense. My downstairs neighbor told me that they keep twenty birds in their apartment. I couldn’t hear them before I had the information.
This playlist is a mixture of film and tv soundtracks or references, but mostly an array of memories from the past sixteen months. It is a connect-the-dots exercise, or technique to practice bodily self-awareness after a prolonged period of collective disembodiment and distance. It grew as a mesh of repetitions, notations, and remembering. It grew as a soundtrack, not as a score; it contains contrasting rhythms and moods.
A very substantial reason why I chose the line of work I do today, was to connect. To connect with the numerous makers and collectives whose positionality and work through film are a practice of social organization, a feminist open-ended transmission of knowledge, a collective form of thought and action. The temporary slowing down of content production last year was a decisive moment for recomposing the structure and context of filmmaking as work and as a form of communication. It’s already happening.
Staying connected at the time of remote work or participation remains dubious. Have I been everywhere in 2020 or was I nowhere? Entering spaces virtually allowed connections and collaborations that would otherwise be inaccessible due to geographical distances or substantial costs is a solid argument. Yet feelings of disembodiment, self-detachment, and many cases of alienation in local communities and breaks in support structures and absolute precarisation have influenced most of us. Where do we focus our communications and how do we expand and sustain our alliances from now on?
To connect-the-dots once more, sharing a collection of songs – or a single song really – is very much similar to sharing emotions, skills, knowledges, time, food, or a room. Like being on a film set, a screening room, or a conversation together. Like sending the spontaneous text message to a stranger telling them how much you enjoyed their film.
Publishing creative works-in-progress is something we should be doing more of. Floating in a space of incompleteness, in-the-making-ness, and reckoning with each other is something we should be doing more of. And if anything, questing for certainty and completion in our industry is compromising our art on a collective level.
READIn defense of works-in-progress
What would happen to storytelling, urban planning, and decision-making if we shifted the perspective on Kontula and other similar neighbourhoods and started to ask what they need?
READWe should change the way we talk about the suburbs in Finland
In this podcast, Princess Jimenez takes listeners on a journey through the central topic of how migrants and refugees are always asked “what are you doing here?” Or “if you don’t like it, leave”. Listen to Princess Jimenez’s unflinching responses as she siezes the bull by the horns in response to such racist questions.
READThe Question
Music videos typically are used to entertain the public, but the effects of music videos can be much more far-reaching than just entertainment. They originally served the purpose of creating an outlet where artists could generate publicity for their work, broaden their popular appeal, and reach wider audiences with interesting audio-visual content. Over the years, the visual imagery in music videos has increasingly become as significant as the music itself.
READPehmee’s Watchlist: Breaking Stereotypes, One Music Video at a Time
