Jani Ruscica (*1978) is a Helsinki-based artist who was educated at the Chelsea College of Art and Design in London and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. His work includes film, video and photography amongst other media. Ruscicas interest lies in how one defines one’s placement in the world, and how this definition changes according to personal, cultural, representational or even scientific factors. Ruscica's self reflexive works explore the intersection between cinema, video art, theatre and performance.
Pekka Sassi (*1969) lives and works in Helsinki. He received his MA from the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Department of Media Studies in 2000. His works include installations, music, sound pieces and experimental short films which have been presented at solo and group exhibitions, as well as at film festivals worldwide such as Rotterdam, Cannes, EMAF, Tampere and Hamburg.
Ruben Östlund (*1974) started his film career by directing skiing films in the 1990s which proved to be the reason for his later acceptance at the film school in Gothenburg. Together with producer Erik Hemmendorff he is the co-founder of the production company Plattform Produktion, which produces his films. He has directed two dramatic feature-length films – The Guitar Mongoloid (2004) and Involuntary (2008) and is currently working on a third, Play, scheduled to be released in 2011.
Lernert Engelberts and Sander Plug are two Dutch artists who decided that working alone was getting boring and started collaborating on art related projects. Since their first video Chocolate Bunny they've been working on commercials, leaders, art movies, documentaries and installations with the aim to make simple and communicative works, that take little note of the existing border between contemporary art and commercial projects and challenge the media and its viewer.
The British artist Stephen Sutcliffe creates film collages using material from his extensive archive of video and audio recordings. His films weave together fragments of the written and spoken word and broadcast images to produce complex and disjointed relationships. Often centred on the theme of self-doubt, Sutcliffe’s poetic works gain their inspiration from literary sources.
Pilvi Takala graduated in 2006 from the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki (MFA) and currently lives and works in Amsterdam. Her works are narratives based on site-specific interventions and actions, sort of exceptions in everyday life. The actions aim to reveal and question unwritten rules and shared truths of the specific social setting in a subtle way. The actual artworks produced, which are based on the actions, are mostly videos, but also photographs and publications.
The New York Times said Jim Finn's films "often play like unearthed artifacts from an alternate universe." His award-winning movies have been called "utopian comedies" and "trompe l'oeil films". The trilogy of communist features is part of the permanent collection of the MoMA. His movies have been screened widely at festivals like Sundance, Rotterdam, Sao Paulo, AFI and Edinburgh as well as museums and cinematheques. His first feature film Interkosmos was called "a retro gust of communist utopianism" by the Village Voice and "charming and fantastic, so full of rare atmospheres" by Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin.
"I am an arts programmer and curator. For the last eight years, I have been based in Liverpool working at Liverpool University, Tate Liverpool and FACT and contributing to the curatorial team of the Liverpool Biennial 2004, 2006 and 2008...
Les Blank is a prize-winning independent filmmaker, best known for a series of poetic films that led Time Magazine critic Jay Cocks to write, "I can't believe that anyone interested in movies or America...could watch Blank's work without feeling they'd been granted a casual, soft-spoken revelation." John Rockwell, writing in The New York Times, adds, "Blank is a documentarian of folk cultures who transforms anthropology into art." Les Blank is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences.
