Eija-Liisa Ahtila

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Eija-Liisa Ahtila

Ilppo Pohjola

CrystalEye

Synopsis

“I meet people. One at a time they step inside me and live inside me. Some of them only for a moment, some stay. They set up wherever they want to and take my facial expressions or my leg’s resting position and put their own in their place. They lie on my back and press their toes into my Achilles tendons. They appear in every pause and come out when I am in doubt and fill all the empty space. I shake and say to myself for a long time: good, really good.”

THE HOUSE is a story about a woman who starts to hear extra voices. They interfere with her perception of the world and gradually disrupt the time and space around her. She shuts out all the images by covering the windows of her house with black curtains so that she can be in the space where the sounds are.

The story is based on interviews and discussions with women who have gone through psychosis.

The material was developed by bringing together thoughts about what happens when you loose the sense of chronological time and the ability of experience space as one. The work explores the breakdown of a coherent world, the collapse of the logic of perception and the loss of the sense of time passing.

The work is shown in three simultaneous projections. The material is divided into three parts and the story is edited so that it unfolds on three screens. The intention is to explore the possibilities of disrupting the traditional causal logic, structure and space for perception in screen narrative, and to reassemble the material to form a spatial narrative.


 

THE HOUSE

2002 | 14 min | 3-channel projected installation | 16:9 | Audio 5.1 | Original language Finnish with English subtitles
Written & Directed by EIJA-LIISA AHTILA
Actor MARJAANA MAIJALA
Cinematography ARTO KAIVANTO
Editing TUULI KUITTINEN
Sound Design PETER NORDSTRÖM
Set Design TIINA PAAVILAINEN
Production support AVEK, FINNISH FILM FOUNDATION
Production ILPPO POHJOLA/CRYSTAL EYE

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