Reviews
The Real Housewives franchise has a special place in my heart: it’s a beautiful, messy, infuriating mixture of entertainment and escapism. It’s almost like a twisted sociological experiment where rich people’s vacuous thoughts, money obsessions, and malignant narcissism are exposed.
READThe Real Housewives Franchise: Series of Problematic -Isms and Car-Crash TV at Its Finest
Through reviewing the “Real Housewives” franchise, Ndéla Faye analyzes the fine line between escapism and voyeurism.
Third Culture Kids Suomi Finland teases out the multidimensional layers of culture and identity. What does it mean to be born in Finland and know Finland as your place of residence and socialization, to be a native Finnish speaker and be spoken to in English, to have a white Finnish parent, and get asked where one is really from? What does this do to one’s sense of belonging?
READTell Your Story, Though Your Voice May Shake: A Review of Third Culture Kids Suomi Finland
How is Finland’s shifting demographics influencing different ways of seeing, experiencing, and moving through life?
I am an immigrant in Finland. I have had to move houses three times in the past year, and this small book, published by quince editiones [1], seems to get me: it has an itinerary similar to that of a freelance cultural worker, designed in Mexico, edited in Finland, and printed in Estonia.
READ“A Very Marketable Commodity”
Spyropoulou’s review of “Performing a Lifetime” highlights its confessional and biographical nature, providing practical methods of resistance by exposing the ecologies of identity and trauma.
Plantasy, or “a garden for dreaming” centers around the ideas of togetherness, community building, and the realization of utopias. These kinds of concerns are currently very popular with art spaces as they all vie to create, or at least make the illusion of hospitality, safer spaces, and non-exploitative working conditions. The actualization of these goals seems very simple yet challenging at once because collective work is complicated when an attempt is made to make space for everyone’s needs and desires.
READPlantasy: On the ABCs of TLC
On building communities and making utopias come true through consistent group communication and workable structures.
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of cancel culture is that it almost always focuses on individuals. This might not be the initial purpose – when actresses came out with stories of abuse by Louhimies, they were discussing the Finnish film industry and how it glosses over abusive behavior as much as he does.
READNoise: A Review of Vaiti by Laura Malmivaara
On the contradiction between the culture of silence and the MeToo movement in Finland.
All I’m saying is, I want equity, I also want space; I want to use technology for my neuro-hacking and biohacking to affirm my gender-pro-choice. I’ll have what he’s having please. Until I reclaim my basic human rights, I resist the binary, refuse the insufficient status quo.
READEjaculation Falls: A Queer Diasporic Review
Vishnu Vardhani Rajan on resisting the binary and refusing the insufficient status quo.
Fionde’s story is based on four central elements, which are firmament (represented by the balloons), desert (place), wind (sound) and stars (lights). I have built my review using these elements as titles for each section.
READFIONDE: Unbinding the lost play within us
MATA is a story situated in the Amazon, one that is true, topical and impactful. As MATA is a story, the review will also start as a story.
READMATA: Not a Forest, but a Killer Field
Riina Rastas reviews ‘MATA’ a documentary film about industrial land use impact on climate change and the indigenous peoples’ attempt to protect their land.
It is high time more events happened in Helsinki, led by Indigenous peoples. In this way, the venue naturally becomes a place of belonging, a place where attendees free themselves by just following their own rhythm while speaking up for care towards nature and acknowledging the need to have a night diverse in identities, languages, and musical traditions.
READDarkness Into Flashing Rhymes: Ailu Valle and DJ Uyarakq’s Opening Night Club at the Baltic Circle Festival
The following creative review is inspired by the theatre event entitled “Undertone: a Proposal for Legal Loitering”, an all-night-long amalgam of performances from 08 pm - 05 am that took place in Tiivistämö on November 27th of 2021. The show was put together by a group of creative associates that were convened by Geoffrey Erista. The show expresses the subcultures of electronic music and the ballroom scene, all the while paying tribute to the active creation of safe spaces.
READTransformations: The Secret Worlds Inside Baltic Circle Festival's "Undertone"
As one of the central themes of HIFF this year, a diverse selection of African films took Finnish audiences across the culturally rich continent and into the vast imaginations of African filmmakers. The eclectic selections were further complimented by the five extraordinary short films chosen for the African Express – Short Station. Each of these short films was able to deliver a wealth of human experiences in under 30 minutes of cinematic splendor.
READAfrican Cinema Takes Center Stage
Sharron L. Todd reviews African Express Short Films screened at the 34th Helsinki International Film Festival and why it has an elevated impact on the festival.
Apples takes place during a fictional pandemic that erases people’s memories on a random basis. Such is the case of the main character, Aris, who is struck by oblivion while riding the bus. Once a person has forgotten, they are taken to the hospital and usually claimed by their loved ones. When nobody comes looking for Aris, he is enrolled in a reintegration programme where he is given the task of performing various activities and documenting them in photographs.
READApples: The fragility of identity constructs
