Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026

 

Poster photo from: Viljami Penttilä: Major Bag Alert (FI 2026).

AA: The Aalto ELO Film School Shows are always highlights in both the spring and autumn seasons of the movie world.

They are full of joy and wit, love and horror, vitality and fantasy.

They are in search of lost time, and they project imaginations of disaster.

They express empathy, concern, despair and apocalyptica.

They are in registers of nuance and hyperbole, naturalism and expressionism, minimalism and maximalism,

in genres including contemporary fiction, studies of relationships, historical drama, comedies of embarrassment, Gothic horror, psychotic thriller and experimental essay.

in domains of documentary, fiction, animation and experimental cinema.

Energy is the most important superpower in a movie.

These screenings are great showcases of young energy.

My Aalto ELO Film School Show 2026 blog remarks:

Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026 I

Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026 II

Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026 III

Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026 IV embargo - remarks on Veren maku suussa, Munkki and Major Bag Alert will be published when the school lifts the embargo.

Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026 III

Poster photo from: Viljami Penttilä: Major Bag Alert (FI 2026).

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Villasukka

ENGLISH TITLE / Woollen Sock

TUOTANTONUMERO / W076

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / MA-lopputyö

TYPE OF FILM / Animation

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 3 min 42 sec

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP

ANIMATION TECHNIQUE / stop motion, animated objects

COLOR / color

SOUND / 5.1 

RATIO VIDEO / 16:9

FRAMES PER SECOND / 24

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / no dialogue 

SUBTITLED IN / no dialogue 

PREMIERE STATUS / not premiered yet

DIRECTOR / Katariina Haukka / female

SCRIPT / Katariina Haukka

PRODUCER / Saana Valasma & Elisa Syväoja

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Iina Mesiniemi

SOUND / Leo Lindgren

EDITING / Jesse Lähilehto

PRODUCTION DESIGN / Sonia Gran

COMPOSER / Elias Nieminen

ANIMATION / Katariina Haukka

VFX ARTIST / Mathilda Elias ja Katariina Haukka

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH

Woollen sock joins in a loud concert with pots and pans, but can woollen sock ever be heard by others?

ONE LINER IN FINNISH

Villasukka liittyy kattiloiden kovaan konserttiin, mutta kuka voikaan kuulla pientä Villasukkaa?

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH (3-10 RIVIÄ) 

Woollen sock wakes to a loud noise. Curiosity takes over the sock, and it finds a loud band of pots and pans. The little woollen sock is so captivated by the music and decides to join the chaotic band, not knowing yet what it will play. 

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH

Maassa lojuva villasukka havahtuu kovaan meluun. Uteliaisuus vie voiton ja villasukka löytää keittiön pöydältä kattiloiden kovan konsertin. Pieni villasukka jää musiikin pauloihin ja liittyy kaaoksen omaiseen bändiin, tietämättä, mitä soittaa.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR 

Katariina Haukka studies animation at the Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Department of Film (ELO). Villasukka is Haukka’s Master Thesis film.

AA: A stylish, accomplished, imaginative animation with a charming score. I like the warm glow of the colour world and the dynamic contrast between the hard metal and the soft wool.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Aikamme

ENGLISH TITLE / On Our Time

TUOTANTONUMERO / A80115-925143-W088

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / BA-Lopputyö

TYPE OF FILM / Documentary

GENRE / Experimental

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 12:57

SHOOTING FORMAT / 16 mm and super 8 mm film

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP

COLOR / Color

SOUND / Dolby 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 2K Flat

Camera Facts: Camera, camera model / Aaton XTR Prod

Lenses / Zeiss Superspeed 16 mm + Zeiss/Arri zoom

FRAMES PER SECOND / 24

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish

SUBTITLED IN / English

PREMIERE STATUS / Ei ole ollut ensi iltaa

DIRECTOR / Solomon Luoma / male

SCRIPT *

PRODUCER / Solomon Luoma

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Veeti Hautanen

SOUND / Sandra Tervonen

EDITING / Noora Ranne

COMPOSER / Vilho Louhivuori

MAIN CAST

1. Eetu Alppi

2. Inti Mery

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH *

Our time is up.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH *

Aikamme on lopussa.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

By presenting one ordinary day of an impersonal everyman character who is both everyone and no one in particular, the film explores our age as a mechanical and dehumanising reality of consperforming of banal tasks, work and numbing but unfulfilling leisure, without direction or waterproof rationale behind it. Flow of observing this everyman is interrupted by esseistic montages on themes of work, leisure and meaning. There is an voice-over narration that moves in the zones between childlike questioning, sardonic, deadpan humour and truist-poetic observations

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Esittämällä yhden tavallisen päivän persoonattoman jokamieshahmon elämästä – hahmon, joka on yhtä aikaa kaikki ja ei kukaan erityinen – elokuva tarkastelee aikamme todellisuutta mekaanisena ja epäinhimillistävänä tilana, joka koostuu banaalien tehtävien suorittamisesta, työstä sekä turruttavasta mutta tyydyttämättömästä vapaa-ajasta, vailla suuntaa tai kestävää perustelua olemassaololleen.

Tämän jokamiehen havainnointiin keskittyvä virta keskeytyy esseistisiin montaasijaksoihin, jotka käsittelevät työn, vapaa-ajan ja merkityksen teemoja. Elokuvassa kertojaääni liikkuu lapsenomaisen kyseenalaistamisen, sardonisen, lakonisen huumorin ja truistis-poeettisen havainnoinnin alueella.

AA: I like the ambition. The concept - "our time is up" - could not be greater. Solomon Luoma pursues the biggest perspective but has the wisdom to keep his vision grounded to the everyman protagonist. His visual range covers the experimental, abstract, realist, kitchen sink, surveillance camera and stone age painting. On offer is a montage of associations about our road to nowhere.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Vuosipäivä

ENGLISH TITLE / Our Day

TUOTANTONUMERO / W090

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / BA-lopputyö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction 

GENRE / Drama

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 16 m 50 s

SHOOTING FORMAT / DCP

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 1:1.85

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish

SUBTITLED IN / English

PREMIERE STATUS / N/A

DIRECTOR / Jori Pirkkalainen

SCRIPT / Erika Rehmonen

PRODUCER / Kasper Lampela, Henrik Björklund

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Vitaly Petuhov

SOUND / Ilmari Järvenpää

EDITING / Myrsky Vederhorn

SET DESIGN / Lotta Pirhonen, Josu Koivisto

COSTUME DESIGN / Elina Ström

COMPOSER / Ilmari Järvenpää

MAIN CAST:

1. Elina Hietala (Rebekka)

2. Akseli Lehtinen (Osku)

3. Milka Ahlroth (Armi)

4. Sara Melleri (Heli)

5. Timo Tuominen (Ilkka)

6. Rosa Honkonen (Lilli)

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat - Teachers: 

Ohjaus: Marika Harjusaari & Hanna Maylett

Käsikirjoitus: Timo Lehti

Tuotanto: Anu Hukka & Anna Heiskanen

Kuvaus: Jonathan Harvey

Lavastus: Kaisa Mäkinen

Leikkaus: Oskar Franzen

Äänisuunnittelu: Pietari Koskinen

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH *

Pretending doesn’t change a thing.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH *

Ei se leikkimällä muuksi muutu.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

After a litany of bad relationships Rebekka has finally found the one, Osku. Though a little younger and cornier than her, he makes Rebekka happy. At the graduation party of Rebekka’s goddaughter, Rebekka runs to an old colleague of hers, and possibly, her future mother-in-law. Things are revealed about Osku that Rebekka hasn’t wanted to see.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Huonojen ihmissuhteiden litanian jälkeen Rebekka on viimein löytänyt sen oikean, Oskun. Vaikka Osku on hieman sokerisempi ja nuorempi, hän tekee Rebekan onnelliseksi. Rebekan kummityttären valmistujaisjuhlissa Rebekka törmää vanhaan kollegaansa – ja mahdollisesti tulevaan anoppiinsa. Oskusta selviää asioita, joita Rebekka ei ole tahtonut nähdä.

AA: An interesting drama of relationships. Three years after their first night together, Rebekka and Osku reconnect. Rebekka is shocked to learn by accident that Osku is so much younger than she, and she cannot get over it. The world has changed. Traditionally, women were attracted to men who were older, even significantly older. That is no longer necessarily the case. Jori Pirkkalainen refuses to give a solution to the complex situation.

embargo  MUNKKI (Killing Me Softly) 2026, documentary, dir. Viena Kytöjoki, BA film, 22'

embargo  MAJOR BAG ALERT 2026, Fiction, dir. Viljami Penttilä, BA film, 15'

Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026 II

Poster photo from: Viljami Penttilä: Major Bag Alert (FI 2026).

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Limerenssi

ENGLISH TITLE / Limerance

TUOTANTONUMERO / W078

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / MA-lopputyö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction

GENRE / Poetic drama, horror, anxiety

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 22 min 54 s 

SHOOTING FORMAT / Proress4444, ARRI RAW

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / Cinemascope 1:2.39

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25

PREMIERE STATUS / DCP waiting for mastering. No premiere confirmed.

DIRECTOR / Jasmin Gummerus / female

SCRIPT / Jasmin Gummerus / female

PRODUCER / Tia Talli / female

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Moritz Scherzer / male

SOUND / Simo Saukkola / male

EDITING / Joonas Veijanen / male

PRODUCTION DESIGN / Sofia Pamilo / female

COSTUME DESIGN / Janina Vuorivaara / female, they/them

COMPOSER / Simo Saukkola / male

MAIN CAST

1. Soila Shah (Lotta)

2. Arto Muukka (Lennart)

3. Sulo Siikaranta (Uimavalvoja)

4. Freddie Sukura (Ex)

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat - Teachers: Hanna Maylett, Jussi Rantamäki, Rauno Ronkainen, Pietari Koskinen, Harri Ylönen, Kaisa Mäkinen, Liisa Pesonen, Sofia Pantouvaki

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH

Fresh out of a relationship, Lotta develops a one-sided crush on body modification artist Lennart.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH

Vastikään eronnut Lotta ihastuu yksipuolisesti lävistäjä-Lennartiin.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH (3-10 RIVIÄ)

The story follows LOTTA, who, after a breakup, is left with a broken heart and an empty home. Lotta sweeps through her days as a swimming hall cleaner, dwelling on her romantic problems. Until she encounters LENNART, a body modification artist, and her world begins to change. Lotta falls in love suddenly and strongly and becomes obsessed with him. Lennart, oblivious to Lotta’s feelings, is the piercer of her heart, and she’ll do anything to be part of his world.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH

Vastikään eronnut, sydänsuruissaan rypevä LOTTA työskentelee uimahallissa siivoojana. Kun suihkutilassa tulee vastaan lävistetty napa, Lotta näkee mahdollisuuden tuntea taas jotakin. Hän päättää hankkia lävistyksen ja päätyy lävistysstudioon, eksoottiseen ja eroottiseen paikkaan, jonka omistaa LENNART. Oli kyse sitten kivun tuomasta mielihyvästä tai Lennartin lämpimästä kosketuksesta, Lotta rakastuu päätä pahkaa. Lennart, joka on autuaan tietämätön Lotan tunteista, on hänen tuleva rakkautensa, mitä ikinä se vaatisikaan.

AA: A ferocious tale of unrequited love. Love is a play with fire, even when one-sided. Vivid milieux of the bathhouse, Lotta's apartment and Lennart's body art studio. Sensual. The art of the ellipsis.

embargo: VEREN MAKU SUUSSA (To the Last Drop) 2026 fiction, D: Ella Laine, MA film, 17'

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Sekasauna

ENGLISH TITLE / Mixed Sauna

TUOTANTONUMERO / W084

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / MA-lopputyö

TYPE OF FILMvFiction 

GENRE / Comedy/Drama

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 15min 47sec 

SHOOTING FORMAT / HD

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP or screener

COLOR / Color 

SOUND / 48 kHz, 24 bit, BWF 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 1:85:1

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25 fps

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish 

SUBTITLED IN / English 

PREMIERE STATUS / ELO Spring Fest 2026

DIRECTOR / Juuso Timonen, male

SCRIPT / Eveliina Pasanen, female

PRODUCER / Anita Hyppönen, female

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Anssi Tiusanen, male

SOUND / Ville Visti, male

EDITING / Daniela Heimsch, female

SET DESIGN / Aino Kaurismäki, female

COSTUME DESIGN / Eva-Liis Lidenburg, female

COMPOSER / Timo Kämäräinen, male

MAIN CAST

1. Mauno Terävä (Mikko)

2. Janna Räsänen (Hanna)

3. Salla Loper (Laura) 

4. Tom Rejström (Sauli)

5. Herman Nyby (Joel)

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH *

What if we just go all together?

ONE LINER IN FINNISH *

Onhan sulle ok, että mennään kaikki yhdessä?

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

Introvert Mikko is anxious that he won’t be able to come out of his shell during the weekend at his relatively new spouse’s cottage. His spouse Hanna is certain that Mikko will make a great first impression on her chosen family, the three friends that they are hosting. 

When it’s time for the sauna Mikko has not, despite all his attempts, figured out the sauna dress code of this new social bubble. As he steps into the sauna, Mikko realizes he’s the only one wearing swimwear—everybody else is naked. This traumatising event causes mixed emotions which Mikko is unable to shake away. Mikko tries to come out of his shell with his own way but everything ends up going even worse.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Introvertti Mikko viettää viikonloppua uuden puolisonsa mökillä jännittäen, pääseekö hän ulos kuorestaan uusien ihmisten kanssa. Puoliso Hanna on varma, että Mikko tekee hyvän ensivaikutelman Hannan lähimpiin ystäviin, joita he mökillä isännöivät. 

Kun tulee saunan aika, ei Mikko ole saanut selville uuden porukan saunaetikettiä. Mikon astuessa sekasaunaan, hän huomaa olevansa ainoa uimahousuissa - kaikki muut ovat alasti. Tämä kokemus jää kaivelemaan Mikkoa, eikä hän saa häädettyä hankalia ajatuksia mielestään. Loppuillasta Mikko koettaa vapautua omalla tyylillään, mutta tämä eskaloi asiat entistä huonompaan suuntaan.

AA: A tragicomedy of embarrassment. A tale of an awkward evening at the summer dacha where the host is out of his element at the mixed sauna. This movie is in the tradition of the old Finnish comedy favourite Aatamin puvussa ja vähän Eevankin ["In Adam's Dress and a Little in Eva's, Too"] but modernized and more raucuous. A fun concept, but I fail to connect with the characters. 

Juuso Timonen and Eveliina Pasanen offer an original view on nudity. In Finland, there is a long legacy (probably since forever) of nudity being the most natural thing in the world. For instance, nudity has never been a ground for film rating in Finland. But the nonchalance about nudity has never been shared by everyone, and now there is even a new wave of prudishness, perhaps an import from the Puritanical United States.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / tj28

ENGLISH TITLE / 28 Days Left

TUOTANTONUMERO / W083

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / MA-lopputyö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction 

GENRE / Drama, coming of age

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 23 min 5 sec

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital / ProRes4444

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP / 3K5698

COLOR / Color 

SOUND / 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 2.39:1

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25 

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish / Arabic

SUBTITLED IN / English 

PREMIERE STATUS / Cannes 2026

DIRECTOR / Yasmin Najjar / female

SCRIPT / Kasperi Riihimäki

PRODUCER / Meri-Tuuli Varis

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Nadia Farghaly

SOUND / Laura Torkkola

EDITING / Julia Matinniemi

PRODUCTION DESIGN / Sonia Gran

COSTUME DESIGN / Satu Muurinen and Iiris Jämsén

COMPOSER / Laura Torkkola

Make-Up & Hair Design / Lotta Juntunen

MAIN CAST

1. Yasmin Najjar (Lillak)

2. Okko Alanne (Orasmaa)

3. Sherwan Haji (Baba’s voice)

4. Mohamed El-Waber (Yusuf)

5. Leevi Pellas (Kuusisto)

6. Rosa Honkonen (Seppänen)

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat - Teachers: 

Hanna Maylett

Rauno Ronkainen

Pietari Koskinen

Harri Ylönen

Jussi Rantamäki

Raija Talvio

Kaisa Mäkinen

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH *

Then we’ll never have to think about this again. 

ONE LINER IN FINNISH *

Tää on yhtä leikkiä koko paska.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

A Finnish-Palestinian woman, Amani Lillak, is completing her voluntary military service in the Finnish Army’s medical corps. During a final combat exercise, Lillak learns that the crisis in her father’s homeland has further escalated. At the same time, the intensity of the combat exercise pushes internal tensions within the medical corps to their breaking point. Lillak tries to turn her back on both conflicts and be free for just a moment.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Palestiinansuomalainen Amani Lillak suorittaa vapaaehtoista asepalvelustaan Suomen armeijan lääkintäjoukoissa. Kesken loppusotaharjoituksen Lillak saa kuulla isänsä kotimaassa entisestään eskaloituneesta kriisistä. Samaan aikaan intensiivinen sotaharjoitus ajaa lääkintäjoukon sisäiset ristiriidat äärimmilleen. Lillak yrittää kääntää selkänsä molemmille konflikteille ja olla vain hetken vapaa.

AA: A thrilling and complex drama about military service in multi-cultural Finland with a Finnish-Palestinian female protagonist, Amani. A nighttime combat exercise is interrupted when a deer is involved. Modern telecommunications enable things and cause disruption and confusion. Amani hears that his grandfather has just been killed in a missile attack on a hospital. [We are thinking about Gaza]. Bouleversant. Yasmin Najjar handles well the challenge of conveying both alarm and control.

Aalto ELO Film School Spring Show 2026 I

Photo from: Viljami Penttilä: Major Bag Alert (FI 2026).

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Paper

ENGLISH TITLE / Paper

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / Kurssityö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 4 min

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP                                    

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 5.1         

RATIO VIDEO / 16:9

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / No dialogue

SUBTITLED IN / No dialogue

PREMIERE STATUS / Not premiered

CREDITS                                                                                 

DIRECTOR / Davis Gauja

SCRIPT / Estella Niemi, Lotta Lemetti, Miranda Hiidenkari, Salla Oinas, Karoliina Kasurinen, Valo Rinne

PRODUCER / Estella Niemi, Lotta Lemetti, Miranda Hiidenkari, Salla Oinas, Karoliina Kasurinen, Zoe Amela Serrano, Valo Rinne

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Estella Niemi

SOUND / Pauliina Huotari

EDITING / Davis Gauja

SET DESIGN / Lotta Lemetti, Karoliina Kasurinen, Zoe Amela Serrano

COSTUME DESIGN / Miranda Hiidenkari, Salla Oinas        

GAFFER / Valo Rinne

OPERATOR / Nadia Farghaly

1st AC / Moritz Scherzer

GRIP / Philip Leierer

MAIN CAST

1. Kaija Pakarinen: Rauha

2. Pekka Strang: Taisto

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat - Teachers: 

RAUNO RONKAINEN

KAISA MÄKINEN

LIISA PESONEN

Antti Pirinen (valaisuopettaja)

Tuomo Hutri (kuvauksen sijainen)

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH: A Nightmare about the politically charged atmosphere of 1930s.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH: Painajainen 1930-luvun poliittisesti latautuneesta ilmapiiristä.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH: An old woman has fallen asleep while drawing social democratic posters at the workers’ house cafe. Suddenly a Lapua Movement fascist appears in her dream. He has come to destroy the quiet act of resistance.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH: Vanha nainen on nukahtanut kesken demokraattisten julisteiden piirtämistä Työväentalon kahvilassa. Yhtäkkiä Lapuanliikkeen jäsen ilmestyy hänen uneensa. Hän on tullut tuhoamaan hiljaisen vastarinnan elkeet.

 

AA: A powerful, expressive and boldly expressionist movie both in vision and audio concept. Sharp.

Not shown: LOST AT SEA. 2026 fiction, dir. David Bošnjak. Course Exercises (Night Life), 3'

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Paljonko kello on?

ENGLISH TITLE / What time is it?

TUOTANTONUMERO / W111

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / Animation minor 

TYPE OF FILM / Animation

GENRE / Drama

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 5 min 48 sec

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP 1:85:1 flat

ANIMATION TECHNIQUE / 2D digital

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 16:9

FRAMES PER SECOND / 24

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / No dialogue

SUBTITLED IN / English

PREMIERE STATUS / Premiere at Spring Screening

DIRECTOR / Eetu Jokela (He/him)

PRODUCER / Eetu Jokela

COMPOSER / Eetu Jokela

BACKROUND ARTISTS / Sonja Suonsivu, Tiia Horppu

Foley artist / Tiia Horppu

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat - Teachers / Heta Jäälinoja

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH: When is the time to reminisce? When is the time to look into the future and use the time that has been given?

ONE LINER IN FINNISH:Milloin on aika muistella? Entä milloin on aika katsoa tulevaisuuteen ja 

käyttää aika hyväksi?

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH:This film is about the home of the soul and the passing of time. The protagonist thinks about their childhood memories and returns to their childhood cottage, only to find that things have changed. They ignore this until it becomes impossible. But it’s never too late and eventually they find strength in their memories, in order to fix things.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH: Elokuva kertoo henkisestä kodista ja ajan kulumisesta. Hahmo muistelee lapsuuttaan ja palaa aikuisena lapsuuden mökille huomatakseen, että paikat lahoavat käsiin. Hän ei kuitenkaan tee asialle mitään kunnes on pakko. Koskaan ei kuitenkaan ole liian myöhäistä ja lopulta hän löytää voimaa muistoistaan korjatakseen asiat.

AA: Animation, stylized, with affinities in line drawing with the Estonian school of Priit Pärn. The persistence of memory. An uncanny aspect: soft definition photographs, in which faces have been replaced with blank circles without features. Enigmatic, haunting.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / I'd Rather Be a Concorde 

ENGLISH TITLE / I'd Rather Be a Concorde 

TUOTANTONUMERO / W130

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / MA Graduation film

TYPE OF FILM / Animation

GENRE / Comedy, Fantasy

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2025

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland, Belgium, Portugal

DURATION OF THE FILM / 7:33

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital 16:9

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP

ANIMATION TECHNIQUE / Digital 2D an 3D

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 16:9

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / English

SUBTITLED IN / English

PREMIERE STATUS / Finnish Premiere

DIRECTOR / Javier Fabregas, male

SCRIPT / Javier Fabregas

PRODUCER / Re: Anima, Javier Fabregas 

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Mreethmandir Kumar Roy

SOUND / Petri Kärkkäinen

EDITING / Javier Fabregas 

COMPOSER Bartosz Zaskórski, Joni Rajamäki

ANIMATION / Javier Fabregas, Anastasia Kraynyuk, Nestor Feijoo

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH *

An immigrant and his companion guide Wizard saying “Hello” to new unknown lands.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH *

Maahanmuuttaja ja hänen oppaansa, velho, sanovat "Hei" uusille, tuntemattomille maille. 

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

In this experimental film that recreates old fantasy video games through irony, the characters face strange situations and places that allude to the absurd nature of the immigrant's journey: its ideas of achievement, monotony, and expectation.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Tässä kokeellisessa elokuvassa, joka luo uudelleen vanhoja fantasiapelejä ironian keinoin, hahmot kohtaavat outoja tilanteita ja paikkoja, jotka viittaavat maahanmuuttajan matkan absurdiin luonteeseen: sen saavutuksiin, monotoniaan ja odotuksiin liittyviin ajatuksiin.

 

AA: A flight of fancy taking us into a position of absurdity and beyond: transcending into a higher perspective on the immigrant experience. A clash with a hot air balloon Saddam Hussein figure and the spirit of the classic Peruvian composition El cóndor pasa (trad. origin, comp. Daniel Alomía Robles 1913). Retro scifi fun with archaic video graphics and minimalist old analog computer animation. Dancing giant hot air balloon figures occupy Helsinki. The title is a wordplay on Paul Simon's English lyrics to El cóndor pasa ("I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail").

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Terra incognita

ENGLISH TITLE / Terra incognita

TUOTANTONUMERO / ELO-E1212

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2025

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 03:29 (min. & sec.)

SCREENING FORMAT / .mov / ProRes 422 / 3840 × 2160

SOUND /  STEREO

PREMIERE STATUS / Spring screening is the “World Premiere”

CREDITS: / Philip Leierer, Sofia Pamilo, Milla Lähtevänoja, Matti Maalismaa, Noa Korhonen

MAIN CAST

1. Moritz Scherzer

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH * This is the final work from our MA. Lab (Virtual Production course) from last autumn. 

AA: Minimalist, elliptic, mysterious. The wind in the desert. Blurry imagery. Low tech. A stunning awesome ambient soundscape. Aimless rambling. Red light. Pyramid.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Hovin vuoksi

ENGLISH TITLE / Fool's Bargain

TUOTANTONUMERO / W118

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / Välityö, sivuaineen lopputyö

TYPE OF FILM / Animation

GENRE / Comedy / Fantasy

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 4 min 13 sec

ANIMATION TECHNIQUE / 2D

COLOR / Color

RATIO VIDEO / 16:9

FRAMES PER SECOND / 24

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / No dialogue

SUBTITLED IN / No dialogue

DIRECTOR / Arttu Porkka, Leo Lindgren / male

SCRIPT / Arttu Porkka

PRODUCER / Arttu Porkka

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Arttu Porkka

SOUND / Leo Lindgren

COMPOSER / Arttu Porkka, Leo Lindgren

ANIMATION / Arttu Porkka, Leo Lindgren

MAIN CAST

1. Hovinarri

2. Trubaduuri

3. Ritarit

4. Vampyyrit

5. Kuningas

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat - Teachers: Heta Jäälinoja

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH *

Long live the king!

ONE LINER IN FINNISH *

Kauan eläköön kuningas!

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

In a castle, the court jester is entertaining the king, only to find out that the king is dead.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Linnan hovinarri viihdyttää kuningasta, vain huomatakseen kuninkaan olevan kuollut.

AA: Gothic animation, bordering on the grotesque. Bold stylization. Twisted spaces with Caligariesque affinities. Smoke in the air. The King is dead, and the court seems to exist solely to serve the vampires. 

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Laura

ENGLISH TITLE / Laura

TUOTANTONUMERO / W104

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / Etydi 2 -kurssityö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction

GENRE / Drama

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2025

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 10:36

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital 3.2K

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP 2K

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 24bit 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 1.85:1

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish 

SUBTITLED IN / English

PREMIERE STATUS / Non-premiered

DIRECTOR / Santra Juoperi / female

SCRIPT / Samatar Warfa Abdi

PRODUCER / Adja Wade, Valtti Hyvärinen

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Yasmin Kaakkurivaara

SOUND / Jaakko Huhta

EDITING / Ava Wollrab

SET DESIGN / Alma Kovanen / Joona Pitkänen

COSTUME DESIGN / Riikka Mäntymaa

MAIN CAST

1. Daniel Virtanen / Aleksi

2. Sofia Smeds / Laura

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat - Teachers / Nina Laurio, Patrick Boullenger, Aki Tarkka, Heini Mäntylä, Nina Laurio, Oskar Franzen, Oskari Sipola, Tomi Lauri

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH *

Deeply in love, Aleksi and Laura are preparing to spend the weekend of their lives at a countryside villa, but Aleksi quickly realizes that Laura hasn’t arrived alone.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH *

Umpirakastuneet Aleksi ja Laura valmistautuvat viettämään elämänsä viikonlopun maalaishuvilalla, mutta Aleksille selviää nopeasti, ettei Laura ole saapunut paikalle yksin.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

A head-over-heels couple, Aleksi and Laura, escapes their everyday lives to a countryside villa, ready to spend the weekend of their lives wrapped in romance. But it quickly becomes clear to Aleksi that Laura hasn’t arrived alone – the bedroom is filled with stuffed animals, each with its own name and personality. Aleksi’s love is put to the test when Laura insists on bringing one of them along to their dinner date.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Umpirakastunut pariskunta pakenee arkea maalaishuvilalle ja valmistautuu viettämään elämänsä viikonlopun kuhertelun keskellä. Pariskunnan toiselle osapuolelle, Aleksille, käy kuitenkin nopeasti selväksi, että hänen kumppaninsa Laura ei ole saapunut huvilalle yksin – makuuhuone on täynnä pehmoleluja, joista jokaisella on nimi ja persoonallisuus. Aleksi yrittää parhaansa mukaan sivuuttaa tämän romanttista tunnelmaa latistavan tosiasian, mutta rakkaus joutuu testiin viimeistään siinä vaiheessa, kun Laura haluaa ottaa yhden pehmoleluista mukaan ravintolaillalliselle.

AA: An unusual drama of a relationship. Aleksi and Laura are about to start their first weekend together at a countryside dacha when Aleksi discovers an unknown major presence in Laura's life - a company of furry toys including bears and lions. They form an army of dolls, each with a unique provenance and significance. They and Laura are inseparable, and Aleksi has to deal with one of them even on a visit to a restaurant. No, they are not a hobby. They occupy the bed. The terms of the relationship have to negotiated on their terms.

Toys and pets can be important transitional objects* in the éducation sentimentale. Santra Juoperi heightens her story to a fine point of balance betweeen seriousness and absurdity.

* Donald Winnicott on the transitional object and transitional experience: see Wikipedia: Comfort object.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Takeaway

ENGLISH TITLE / Takeaway

TUOTANTONUMERO / W105

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / Etydi 2 -kurssityö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction

GENRE / Drama

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2025

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 8:18

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital 3.2K

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP 2K

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 24bit 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 2.39:1

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish

SUBTITLED IN / English

DIRECTOR / Matleena Hyttinen / female

SCRIPT / Katariina Kohi

PRODUCER / Pauli Hentilä, Valtti Hyvärinen

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Saana Lyly

SOUND / Lena Patta

EDITING / Jenni Syväkuru

SET DESIGN / Sirpa Hyväri, Karuna Vahteri

COSTUME DESIGN / Riikka Mäntymaa

MAIN CAST

1. Pablo Ounaskari / Fredi

2. Adeliina Arajuuri / Samira

Taiteellisen työryhmän vastuuopettajat / Teachers / Nina Laurio, Patrick Boullenger, Aki Tarkka, Heini Mäntylä, Nina Laurio, Oskar Franzen, Oskari Sipola, Tomi Lauri

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH * 

Stuck in a rut, Fredi runs into his old love at work, but the moment is about to be cut short.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH * Elämässään paikalleen jämähtänyt Fredi kohtaa työpaikallaan pikaruokaravintolassa vanhan rakkautensa Samiran, mutta kohtaaminen uhkaa jäädä lyhyeksi.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH * 

Fredi, stuck in a rut in his life and grinding through shift work, is surprised when his former love Samira shows up as a customer at his restaurant. Hope for a better life is reignited – but threatens to fade when Samira wants her order to go. Desperate, Fredi is willing to do anything, and the kitchen’s hot stove offers a painful solution to his need.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Elämässään paikalleen jämähtänyt, vuorotyössä ahertava Fredi saa ravintolassa asiakkaakseen vanhan rakkautensa, Samiran. Toivo paremmasta elämästä syttyy jälleen, mutta uhkaa jäädä lyhyeksi, kun Samira tahtookin annoksensa takeawayna. Fredi on valmis tekemään mitä tahansa saadakseen hetken

hyväksyntää ja sympatiaa, ja keittiön kuuma liesi tarjoaa kivuliaan ratkaisun tarpeeseen.

AA: A shock therapy mini drama about unrequited love.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Tuu tuu tupakkarulla

ENGLISH TITLE / Mother of the Year

TUOTANTONUMERO / A80115- 925143-1-W079

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / Välityö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction

GENRE / Psychological thriller

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2025

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 10 min

SHOOTING FORMAT / Sony A7S3 - DCI 4K (4096×2160 All-Intra, 10-bit 4:2:2, Atlas 1.5x Anamorphic, 2.84:1)

SCREENING FORMAT / 4K DCP

COLOR / Color

SOUND / 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 16:9 

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish

SUBTITLED IN / Finnish, English 

DIRECTOR / Paula Dufva / female

SCRIPT / Paula Dufva

PRODUCER / Maija Hartikainen, Oula Hyle

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Moritz Geraldo (Moritz Scherzer)

SOUND / Petri Kärkkäinen

EDITING / Anniina Kauttonen

SET DESIGN / Aino Kaurismäki

COSTUME DESIGN / Lili Hillerich

COMPOSER / Josef He

ANIMATION / Alex Stöd

MAIN CAST

1. Anna Kopo / roolinimi: Anna

2. Suvi Laukkanen / roolinimi: Janni

3. Janne Juote / roolinimi: Ennin isä

4. Enni Ronkainen / roolinimi: Enni

ONE LINER IN ENGLISH * As a strange smell spreads through the apartment building, newly divorced Anna is forced to confront maternal imperfection — and its consequences.

ONE LINER IN FINNISH * Oudon hajun levitessä taloyhtiössä, vastikään eronnut Anna joutuu kohtaamaan äitiyden rajallisuuden ja sen kohtalokkaat seuraukset.

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH * Mother of the Year is a short psychological thriller about ANNA (30) who has just moved to a new apartment that smells like dead rats. She is starting a new life, which includes joint custody with her ex and a mother who doubts Anna’s abilities to raise her 2-year-old. Anna is fed up with people intervening with her parenting but still finds herself judging another mother - her neighbor JANNI (35) who she sees smoking while pregnant. When Anna learns that Janni is actually not expecting a child, although she looks like it, she has to face her own hypocrisy. Meanwhile the rotten scent intensifies and leads Anna to its origins - Janni’s apartment. Anna has another lesson to learn as she finds a dead infant in the apartment and is forced to admit that sometimes intervening in other people’s business has its place.

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH * Tuu tuu tupakkarulla on lyhyt psykologinen trilleri Annasta (30), joka on juuri muuttanut uuteen, toisinaan kuolleilta rotilta haisevaan asuntoon. Anna on aloittelemassa uutta elämää, johon kuuluu yhteishuoltajuus exän kanssa ja äiti, joka epäilee Annan kykyä selvitä äitiyden haasteista. Anna on kyllästynyt siihen, että muut puuttuvat hänen vanhemmuuteensa, mutta huomaa silti itse arvostelevansa toista äitiä – naapuriaan Jannia (35), jonka näkee polttavan tupakkaa raskaana ollessaan. Kun Anna saa tietää, ettei Janni odotakaan lasta, hänen on kohdattava oma tekopyhyytensä. Samaan aikaan mädän haju voimistuu ja johdattaa Annan Jannin asuntoon. Siellä Anna saa vielä yhden opetuksen: joskus toisten asioihin puuttuminen on perusteltua.

AA: A psychotic thriller about the horrors of motherhood. Elliptic, the viewer can figure out the full shock explanation to the puzzle during the end credits.

ORIGINAL TITLE OF THE FILM / Hienosäätöä

ENGLISH TITLE / Empath

TUOTANTONUMERO / W101

TYPE OF PRODUCTION / Välityö

TYPE OF FILM / Fiction 

GENRE / Comedy

YEAR OF PRODUCTION / 2026

COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION / Finland

DURATION OF THE FILM / 07.42

SHOOTING FORMAT / Digital

SCREENING FORMAT / DCP

COLOR / Color 

SOUND / 5.1

RATIO VIDEO / 1.85:1

FRAMES PER SECOND / 25

ORIGINAL LANGUAGE / Finnish 

SUBTITLED IN / English 

DIRECTOR / Niilopekka Anturaniemi / male

SCRIPT / Niilopekka Anturaniemi

PRODUCER / Elmo Nikula & Iris Sid

CINEMATOGRAPHY / Valo Rinne

SOUND / Kaspian Gröndahl

EDITING / Erik Vartiainen

SET DESIGN / Vili Elviira Loikkanen

COSTUME DESIGN / Siiri Lillqvist & Taru Patjas

VFX / Olli Niskanen

MAIN CAST

1. Sebastian Lindström (Ossi)

2. Elli Melasniemi (Anne)

3. Juho Lehto (Tarjoilija)

SYNOPSIS IN ENGLISH *

Ossi is on a date he has been looking forward to. He wants to be the best version of himself, and so he relies on technology to make that happen. 

SYNOPSIS IN FINNISH *

Ossi on jo pitkään odottamillaan treffeillä ja haluaa olla paras versio itsestään. Hän turvautuu siksi teknologiaan huonoin lopputuloksin. 

AA: A comedy of embarrassment about a long awaited date, evoking Jerry Lewis, bold in its handling of awkwardness. The use of a mobile phone app during a date only makes things worse. Like in Jerry Lewis classics, from comedy to horror is but one step. From these premises, a really far out performance could be imagined.

Anton Chekhov: Onni [Happiness: Selected Short Stories 1880-1903] (a book)

Isaac Levitan: Вечерний звон / Evening Bells (RU 1892). Oil on canvas. 87 cm × 107.6. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow. From: Arthive.net. Public Domain. Wikimedia Commons. Please click on the image to expand it.

Anton Chekhov / Anton Tšehov: Onni: valitut novellit 1880-1903 [Happiness: Selected Short Stories 1880-1903]. 1104 pages. 52 short stories edited and translated by Martti Anhava, 21 for the first time in Finnish in a book edition. Hard cover. Helsinki: Siltala & Sanavalinta, 2025.

Repeating myself from the 2025 Helsinki Book Fair: a literary highlight of the year was the publication of Onni [Happiness], the largest ever Finnish edition of Anton Chekhov's short stories, edited and translated by Martti Anhava, the Finnish Chekhov maestro himself. According to my estimate, Chekhov wrote 605 short stories (according to Anhava, 580). I thought then that a third might have been translated into Finnish. 

But for the Finnish Chekhov reader there is a double whammy: the Finnish National Library has made available and searchable the digital archive of all old Finnish newspapers and magazines, and there are hundreds of Anton Chekhov translations now available from the decades of the Autonomy, starting from 1889. 

Chekhov was popular in Finland already in his lifetime. Not only humoresques but also weightier pieces, such as My Life, were in demand (My Life was serialized in several newspapers across the country). It is not easy to count the number of the Chekhov pieces which have been translated since they appear under different titles, and sometimes names of characters have been changed. But now I think that a half of Chekhov's work has been translated. I also believe that essential pieces remain untranslated.

In 2012-2013 was the last time I had a big project to read as much Chekhov as possible. I wrote then several Chekhov entries in this blog. I have written in anthologies about "Dostoevsky and the cinema" and "Tolstoy and the cinema" and hope one day to cover "Chekhov and the cinema". Common to all three writers is that I don't find actual adaptations of their work indispensable. Yet their indirect impact is huge.

I used to think that The Lady with the Dog by Iosif Heifitz was the only really great Chekhov adaptation, and the movie is distinguished, indeed (thanks to superb performances by Aleksei Batalov and Iya Savvina), but I no longer find it quite as great as before. Now Ryusuke Hamaguchi's Drive My Car (JP 2021), based on the novel by Haruko Murakami, has become my favourite Chekhov adaptation. It is a marriage tragedy in which Uncle Vanya, both as text and performance, is a profound reference. It is a story of spiritual resurrection in which Uncle Vanya reads us.

The indirect impact of Chekhov might be even bigger than that of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. To give only one example: A Simple Event / Yek etefagh sadeh (IR 1973) by Sohrab Shahid Saless.

IMPRESSIONISM

Two years ago the 150th anniversary of Impressionism was celebrated, and for the first time I  understood what the epochal change truly meant. It was l'art pour l'art in a certain way, but it was a turn to a heightened sense of realism in a more important way. 

It was a new way of seeing eternity in the instant, the extraordinary in the ordinary and the infinite in the finite.

It was also a philosophical turn to a knowledge about knowledge, understanding about understanding and perception about perception.

There are different meanings to the term "impressionist" and one of them is being sketchy, but the Impressionist turn of Pissarro, Monet, Renoir and their soulmates was the opposite of sketchy. Monet sometimes devoted decades to complete a painting. 

It was not only about seeing but seeing the way of seeing. Including the blur, the shadow, the reflection, the particles, the perpetually changing light. That had already been seen during the Renaissance, but Impressionism was a new stage.

Impressionism in its "l'art pour l'art" sense was turning one's back to prestige subjects, classic themes, famous men, but also society, history, tendency and topical issues.

The impressionist did not seek greatness in great subjects. He found greatness in ordinary and little subjects, and perhaps it was a greatness of the most enduring kind.

For the first time I understood why Chekhov and Proust are seen as the greatest Impressionists of literature.

REDISCOVERING CHEKHOV

A distinguished Russian friend of mine has emphasized that whereas Westerners prefer what they call "mature Chekhov" (starting from The Steppe), Russians have always loved at least as much the young Chekhov, and not only the humoristic pieces. Reading Martti Anhava's (who seems to share my Russian friend's opinion) edition I understand what he meant. Chekhov is brilliant since the beginning, and there are several pieces of substance long before The Steppe, such as Oysters, The Hunter, On the Road and Verochka. 

My Russian friend had also remarked on Chekhov's antisemitism, which I had not registered before, but now it was undeniable, starting from mean Sarah Bernhardt parodies and expanding to vile terminology. It is hard to find a positive Jewish character in Chekhov's work and easy to find negative examples. It is disturbing, because Chekhov found a soulmate in Isaak Levitan, and he was also a Dreyfusard.

Chekhov's misogyny I had registered long ago. This I have always found puzzling. It is out of character, and it diminishes his achievement. In a patriarchal society, women are not allowed to grow, and a parallel situation is everywhere where there is oppression. The oppressed cannot rise to the full height of his potential. There is a temptation to despise the oppressed instead of the oppression.

With these reservations I enjoy Chekhov more than ever. His amazingly wide perspective, his empathy for characters from all walks of life, his talent of observation and ability to express himself in a subtle language, rich and concise at once. Chekhov is a writer's writer. What a pleasure it must be to read it in Russian. But one of the great insights of Drive My Car, the short story by Haruko Murakami and the film by Ryusuke Hamagachi, is that Chekhov transcends barriers of language and culture. Martti Anhava's translations are a superb example of this.

This volume took me a long time to read, because the unwieldy size of the edition made it impossible to carry it around.

Calder. Rêver en équilibre / Dreaming in Equilibrium (2026 exposition Fondation Louis Vuitton)

MOBILE: Alexander Calder, « Black Widow », 1948. Feuille de métal, fil de fer et peinture, 325,1 x 251, 5 cm. Instituto de Arquitetos do Brasil – Departamento de São Paulo. On deposit from the Artist, 1948. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York. Photograph by Tim Nighswander / IMAGING4ART

STABILE: Alexander Calder, « La Grande vitesse », 1969. La Grande vitesse (maquette intermédiaire 1:5 / 1:5 intermediate maquette), 1969, Feuille de métal, boulons et peinture, 259,1 x 342,9 x 236,2 cm. © 2026 Calder Foundation, New York / ADAGP, Paris. Photo courtesy of Calder Foundation, New York / Art Resource, New York.

Calder. Rêver en équilibre / Dreaming in Equilibrium

Fondation Louis Vuitton. 8 avenue du Mahatma Gandhi ; 75116 Paris ; Jardin d'acclimatisation de Paris ; Bois de Boulogne.

    Exposition du 15.4.2026 au 16.8.2026

    More than 300 works: sculptures (bronze, marble, alabaster, brass, plaster, wood, plywood, sheet metal, wire, mercury, limestone, aluminium), monumental sculptures, sketches, pencil and ink drawings, linoleum cuts, cardboard reliefs, posters, paintings (with oil on canvas), watercolours, miniature circus puppets, maquettes, photographs, stop motion photographs of mobiles, assemblages, installations, constellations, performance documents, kinetic objects, mobiles and stabiles, jewelry.

    Cette exposition a été rendue possible grâce à un partenariat avec la Calder Foundation et le Whitney Museum of American Art.

    Commissariat:

Suzanne Pagé, directrice artistique de la Fondation Louis Vuitton, commissaire générale

Dieter Buchhart et Anna Karina Hofbauer, commissaires invités

Assistés de Valentin Neuroth et Claire Deuticke

Olivier Michelon, commissaire associé, assisté de Léna Lévy

    Visited on 24 April 2026

AA: This is the first Alexander Calder exhibition of my life, but I have been aware of the pioneering artist since the Ars 69 exhibition at Ateneum in Helsinki. I am grateful for the epic grandeur of the Fondation Louis Vuitton experience, the devout inspiration of the research and the human perspective of the endeavour which grows into a tale of friendship and mutual inspiration during the heroic decades of Modernism. 

Roughly chronological, the exhibition moves back and forth between the small and the grand. Calder was always aware of scalability. He was born into a family of sculptors and already at an early age observed preparations of monuments and gained an insight into the ancient art and craft of the pantograph.

As a child Calder crafted toy animals from metal. Later he made ink sketches of animals, reduced to bare essentials, yet conveying life, energy and movement. From toys and animals the step was natural to the miniature Cirque Calder with which Alexander achieved a breakthrough in the artist circles of Montparnasse of the 1920s. It was a pioneering innovation in performance art.

We are told that the Cirque Calder objects are by now so fragile that they are on public display for the last time. There is a showroom where a filmed 1960s reconstruction of the performance can be seen, but Alexander S. C. Rower, the artist's grandson, argues that it is only a shadow of the original. According to him, the art of Cirque Calder was not in the objects but in the original live performance, always unique, never rehearsed, never recorded. We are grateful for the objects on display and need to use our imagination for the rest.

In the 1920s Calder was in the inspiring force field of Fernand Léger, Le Corbusier, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miró and Piet Mondrian. He started to create "three-dimensional line drawings" with wire sculptures. He became the anti-Rodin, distancing himself from mass. As "the Daumier of the wire" he twisted the metal to the shape of a dancing Josephine Baker. He crafted "drawings in space".

With his novel sculptures, Calder redefined space. He did not need to fill the space with a massive presence. Negative space, the emptiness inside and outside, grew in significance.

In October 1930 Calder visited Piet Mondrian's studio and experienced a shock epiphany of abstraction. He became an abstract artist. His works were from now on mainly non-figurative, non-objective. Even when he gave a work a "figurative" title such as "Peacock", the work was not inspired by a peacock. The name was given as an afterthought by association or affinity.

Soon after the epiphany of abstraction, Calder moved ahead to kinetic sculptures, in the first stage driven by motors. Marcel Duchamp coined the word "mobiles" to describe them. In French, "mobile" has a double meaning. Besides "movable" it also means "motive" as in "le mobile du crime". Calder's early mobiles are no longer in motion since their motors do not run anymore. Calder himself soon ceased to use motors and started to create mobiles that move by air, wind, gravity and human presence. The experience is that of a constant motion of space and negative space, of light and shadow. At the same time, Calder started creating static abstract sculptures called "stabiles" by Jean Arp in 1932.

Calder added dimensions of time and movement into visual art, dimensions familiar in music, dance, theatre and the cinema. Calder opened new worlds for visual art. His was an art that changed the experience of space itself. His was a conquest of space and a transformation of space. Calder was seen as a visionary in the "geometry of aura" and a discoverer of a "cosmic portal" between worlds.

The definitive art historical characterization about Calder was formulated in an introductory essay by Jean-Paul Sartre in 1946. Sartre called Calder's works "a pure stream of movement in the same way as there are pure streams of light". "They feed on the air, breathe it and take their life from the indistinct life of the atmosphere".

Alexander and Louisa Calder had spent eight transformative years in Paris in 1926-1933. When Hitler rose to power in 1933, they quickly returned to the United States. The exhibition catalogue does not mention this, but Alexander's mother was of Bavarian Jewish lineage. I think this helps understand Calder's urgency in moving to safety and also the unpolitical artist's resolve in contributing a Mercury Fountain to accompany Picasso's Guernica in support of Republican Spain.

Calder kept expanding his field of creativity. During wartime, when aluminium sheet metal was not available, he created "constellations" of wood and wire. He also became a remarkable and original creator of jewelry: a rare collection of bracelets, earrings, rings, belts, necklaces, brooches, tiaras and crowns is on display, mostly created for his own wife Louisa but also for example for Luis Buñuel's wife Jeanne.

Since the mid-1930s, Calder was in great demand as a creator of monumental sculptures and mobiles. He was inspired to electrify a public space with his own humanistic and individual force field. His projects grew increasingly colossal, but even in smaller scale their impact can be felt. We see in the exhibition La Grande vitesse in a maquette stage, but Black Flag (1974) and Five Swords (1976) are on display in grandeur nature: for the first time, a Louis Vuitton exhibition extends to the garden space.

Like in a tribute concert to a great music star, there are a lot of guest stars. Two outstanding exhibitions exist inside the exhibition. There is an all star display of modern art: not only Mondrian but also Brancusi, Kandinsky, Picasso, Klee, Léger, Miró, Hélion, Naum Gabo and Arp are present.

Amazingly, the world's greatest photographers seem to have been fascinated by Calder during his entire career: Herbert Matter, André Kertész, George Hoyningen-Huene, Man Ray, Arnold Newman, Irving Penn, Henri Cartier-Bresson and the film directors Gordon Parks and Agnès Varda.

The experience is oddly gratifying like an excellent multi-course dinner. The works communicate with each other. The whole is bigger than the sum of its parts. This is a feast of friends, a Platonic symposium, an encounter of Goethean Wahlverwandtschaften (Elective Affinities) in a great turning-point of world history and art history.

Catalogue de l'exposition "Calder. Rêver en Equilibre". Contributions de: Anna Karina Hofbauer et Dieter Buchhart (dir.) avec les contributions inédites d'Elizabeth Hutton Turner, de Chus Martinez, d'Olivier Michelon, de Suzanne Pagé, d'Arnauld Pierre ainsi qu'une conversation entre Alexander S. C. Rower et Jordana Mendelson. 24.5 x 28.5. 360 pages. EAN 9782754117289 (Français). EAN 9780300293036 (Anglais). Éditions Hazan, Paris 2026.

OFFICIAL:

"À l’occasion du centenaire de l'arrivée en France d'Alexander Calder et des cinquante ans de sa disparition, la Fondation présente l’exposition « Calder. Rêver en équilibre »."

"Cette exposition couvre un demi-siècle de création, de la fin des années 1920 et les premières représentations du Cirque Calder qui captivent les avant-gardes parisiennes, à ses sculptures monumentales qui redéfinissent l’idée d’art public dans les années 1960 et 1970. À la Fondation, flottant dans l’architecture des espaces dessinés par Frank Gehry, ses mobiles transforment l’exposition en chorégraphie."

"L’exposition, l’une des plus importantes à ce jour consacrées à Alexander Calder, a été conçue en étroite collaboration avec la Calder Foundation, qui en est le principal prêteur. Elle bénéficie également de prêts d’institutions internationales et de collectionneurs privés de premier ordre, regroupant ainsi près de 300 œuvres : des mobiles et stabiles – pour emprunter à la terminologie caldérienne pour désigner les abstractions cinétiques et statiques – mais également des portraits réalisés à partir de fil de fer, des figures sculptées en bois, des peintures, des dessins et même des bijoux, conçus comme de véritables sculptures. Tout au long d’un parcours chronologique, occupant plus de 3000 m2, les préoccupations artistiques fondamentales de Calder sont articulées : tout d’abord le mouvement mais aussi, la lumière, la réflexion, les matériaux humbles, le son, l'éphémère, la gravité, la performance, l'espace positif et négatif."

"Cette exposition étant une célébration anniversaire, elle élargit son propos avec des contributions des contemporains de l’artiste. Des travaux de ses amis, Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Jean Hélion et Piet Mondrian, ainsi que de Paul Klee et Pablo Picasso, permettent de situer l’inventivité radicale de Calder dans le concert des avant-gardes. Trente-cinq clichés réalisés par les plus importants photographes du XXe siècle (Henri Cartier-Bresson, André Kertész, Gordon Parks, Man Ray, Irving Penn et Agnès Varda…) montrent un artiste funambule entre l’art et la vie. « Calder. Rêver en équilibre » présente également des focus consacrés à des ensembles clefs de l’œuvre de Calder, notamment sa série tant appréciée des Constellations ou ses bijoux au dynamisme fascinant."

"Dans la continuité des expositions monographiques consacrées à des figures majeures de l’art des XXᵉ et XXIᵉ siècles — tels que Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Charlotte Perriand, Mark Rothko, David Hockney, Gerhard Richter – la Fondation Louis Vuitton consacre la totalité de ses espaces aux travaux de Calder et pour la première fois la pelouse attenante. Ce faisant, c’est également un dialogue entre les volumes, les plans et les mouvements de Calder et ceux de l’architecture de Frank Gehry que l’exposition initie."

"C’est vers l’âge de 25 ans qu’Alexander Calder renoue avec l’héritage familial (fils d’une peintre et d’un sculpteur, petit-fils d’un sculpteur) en se tournant d’abord vers la peinture et le dessin. Après ses études à l’Art Students League de New York, il s’installe à Paris en 1926. Dans le quartier de Montparnasse, très rapidement, l’artiste s’intègre dans ce qui est alors le premier foyer artistique mondial. Il y propose des formes uniques, des sculptures de fil de fer figuratives et épurées, qui attirent la critique, et un Cirque miniature. Grâce au prêt exceptionnel du Whitney Museum of American Art, une première depuis quinze ans, le Cirque Calder revient à Paris, la ville où il a été créé. Au centre de ce spectacle d’un nouveau genre, Calder manipule des acrobates, clowns, cavaliers miniatures devant une audience sans cesse plus grande. Fernand Léger, Jean Hélion, Le Corbusier, Jean Arp, Joan Miró sont quelques-uns de ses spectateurs, tout comme Piet Mondrian."

"La visite de l’atelier de Mondrian par Calder en 1930, où il fut profondément impressionné par l’environnement spatial et coloré du lieu, marque le tournant abstrait de son œuvre, d’abord par la peinture, puis par la sculpture. Marcel Duchamp proposa le nom de « Mobiles » pour les compositions abstraites et cinétiques que présentent l’artiste en 1932 à la Galerie Vignon à Paris. D’abord entraînés mécaniquement, puis mus par quelques bruissements d’air, ces mobiles empruntent alors « leur vie à la vie vague de l’atmosphère » comme l’écrit Jean-Paul Sartre en 1946. Quant aux « stabiles », Arp proposa ce terme en réponse à la terminologie de Duchamp pour désigner les objets statiques de Calder au début des années 1930."

"Si Calder repart aux Etats-Unis en 1933, il réalise un aller-retour avec l’Europe marqué par sa participation au Pavillon de la République Espagnole en 1937 avec Miró et Picasso. Il revient ensuite en France, dès la fin de la guerre et installe un atelier dans le hameau de Saché, dans la vallée de la Loire, en 1953. C’est un pied dans chaque pays qu’il développe son œuvre, renouvelant jusqu’à son décès en 1976 l’idée même de la sculpture. Par le mouvement bien sûr, mais également par l’invention d’un vocabulaire qu’il déploie à toutes les échelles, allant de fins assemblages de métal s’animant au moindre souffle à des constructions monumentales, il crée des sculptures non objectives qui coexistaient en parallèle avec la nature. Comme le notent Dieter Buchhart et Anna Karina Hofbauer, commissaires invités de l’exposition, « La démarche novatrice de Calder a élargi les dimensions de la sculpture pour y inclure le temps comme une quatrième dimension essentielle »."

Andrew Wilson: I Wanna Be Loved By You. Marilyn Monroe, A Life in 100 Takes (a book, 2026)

 

Andrew Wilson: I Wanna Be Loved By You. Marilyn Monroe, A Life in 100 Takes. 512 pages. Hard cover. ISBN 13: 9781398513440. Simon & Schuster UK, 26 Feb 2026.

I join the Marilyn Monroe centenary celebration by visiting the wonderful exhibition at La Cinémathèque française and reading a new book about her, Andrew Wilson's I Wanna Be Loved By You. 

The book exceeds expectations raised by its own publicity blurb (quoted below). Wilson offers new assessments and much fresh detail. As a biography the book does not strive for completeness. Instead, it is a montage of a hundred fragments. Nor is it a critical study of Monroe's films, talent and art. But it is a rewarding account of the life and the legend based on the best currently available sources. Because Wilson in general pursues discipline in source criticism, I would have welcome some self-scrutiny regarding the controversial decision of publishing confidential notes from psychoanalytic sessions.

In the way of source criticism, particularly welcome are Wilson's remarks about Monroe's early memoir My Story (1954), ghostwritten by Ben Hecht, exceptional thanks to her frankness about childhood sexual abuse and harassment in Golden Age Hollywood. Wilson even bothers to examine her "porn movies" (all fakes featuring lookalikes).

Of the biographies I know, I find Icon: The Life, Times, & Films of Marilyn Monroe, Vol 1–2 by Gary Vitacco-Robles (2014, 2015, 712 + 884 pages) definitive. I have also enjoyed the foundational works by Maurice Zolotow (1960, 1990) and Fred Lawrence Guiles (1969, 1984). Anthony Summers (1985, 1986) excelled in research but was uncritical with sources. Donald Spoto's was the best biography when it was published in 1993 but biased in its interpretation of Monroe's final year, demonizing her psychoanalyst Ralph Greenson.

My own Monroe book (1982, 1996) was not a biography but a study in her public image, and I admire Sarah Churchwell's The Many Lives of Marilyn Monroe (2004) as the authoritative achievement in a similar vein. Barbara Leaming's book (1998) is my favourite about Monroe as a professional and a performer.

Although my book was not biographical, I was fascinated by the Rashomon aspect of the investigation. The Monroe story is full of holes and unreliable witnesses, starting with the protagonist herself. Arthur Miller certainly knew Marilyn, but he did not know Hollywood and therefore seems to have misread Monroe. Other biographers spinned fairytales, but to bring credence to their fantasies they at times conducted solid research.

The most lasting feature of Andrew Wilson's book is his systematic debunking of the Marilyn fabrication industry. Central to the Monroe image is the legend, but in order to do justice to the legend it is necessary to know the reality, as well. 

THE BLACK BOXES

Arthur P. Jacobs, Marilyn Monroe's press agent, in charge of her public image, learned about the death of the star at 22:30 on Saturday evening, 4 August 1962. The official discovery of the body, by the housekeeper Eunice Murray and the psychoanalyst Dr. Ralph Greenson, took place five hours later, at 3:30 on Sunday morning, 5 August 1962. At 3:50 a.m. her physician Dr. Hyman Engelberg arrived, and at 4:25 a.m. the Los Angeles Police Department was alerted. 

Arthur P. Jacobs managed the publicity campaign of Monroe's death in cooperation with 20th Century-Fox. In 1963, he switched into a successful career as a producer of films released by that same company.

After the funeral, Inez Melson, Monroe's business manager, spent three days destroying many of her papers. Later, she quietly acquired her two filing cabinets and kept them until her death in 1985.

Because of disputes among beneficiaries of Monroe's will, most of her personal belongings remained inaccessible for biographers until the October 1999 auction of her property at Christie's in New York. There Anna Strasberg, Lee Strasberg's third wife, who never knew Marilyn, sold it with a net profit of 13.4 million dollars, and the collection was scattered into the four winds.

Marilyn Monroe died alone*. After her death, nobody protected the dignity of her reputation, personal data and privacy. She became fair game for exploitation.

The events during the six to eight hours between her death and the arrival of the police were the most closely guarded secret in the history of Hollywood. Monroe's personal papers remained inaccessible for biographers for 40 years. When they were finally made public, the medical documents confirmed the deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi's original classification of her death as a probable suicide. The suicide may have been accidental. Patricia Newcomb and others closest to her during the final days did not believe it was intentional.

Yes, there was a cover-up, and yes, it was because of the Kennedys. The press release about her death was handled by Monroe's own press agent and business manager. Launching one of the year's greatest news stories they did their best to minimize scandal. The world was different in 1962. The mere presence of the Kennedys in Marilyn Monroe's private life was confidential information that needed to be covered up. Even Fred Lawrence Guiles in his 1969 biography still refrained from naming the Kennedys.

THE ANTI-KENNEDY SMEAR CAMPAIGN

Monroe was a friend and admirer of the Kennedy family. When asked in 1962 about figures who inspired her, Marilyn included in her shortlist President Kennedy and his brother Robert, because "they symbolize the youth of America – in its vigor, its brilliance, and its compassion" (Wilson, p. 380). But when all three were dead, exploiters smeared them in murder fabrications.

Wilson tracks the Marilyn Monroe murder industry down to a single origin: the book The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe (1964) by Frank Capell published by the Herald of Freedom. The former private detective Capell, Sergeant Jack Clemmons (the first police officer on Monroe's death scene) and Maurice Ries (president of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals) were a team of far right political activists dedicated to bring the Kennedys down. They were so successful that the sleaze they originated survives to this day. At the time, even J. Edgar Hoover (the director of the FBI) was intrigued but found no substance in Capell's campaign.

The first major biographer to take the bait was Norman Mailer in Marilyn (1973, 1975). It is a disgrace in the history of literature how luminaries like Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates (Blonde, 2000) contributed to the Monroe lore with blatant exploitation. 

Entire careers were built on Marilyn Monroe fabrications. From a single photograph of him with Monroe taken by the 20th Century Fox publicity department on the set of Niagara in the summer of 1952, the journalist Robert F. Slatzer spun a fairy-tale about their "lifelong friendship" in three books (1974, 1977, 1992). Working together with the journalist Will Fowler, Slatzer made a deal with Capell to recycle his Kennedy conspiracy material.

More dubious figures followed: Tony Sciacca (Anthony Scaduto), Mike Speriglio, Ted Jordan, Lionel Grandison, Jeanne Carmen, John Miner, Deborah Gould (Peter Lawford's third wife) and Hans Jørgen Lembourn. David Conover, Marilyn's first photographer, also invented a lifelong friendship (1981). Colin Clark, the third assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, wrote two books (1995, 2000) with an imagined love affair with Marilyn.

Even Seymour Hersh, the distinguished investigative journalist, participated in The Dark Side of Camelot (1997), withdrawing at the last minute material on Marilyn Monroe based on forged documents from one Lex Cusack.

THE SACRED MONSTER

Jean Cocteau (one of the many poets devastated by Marilyn's death) coined the expression "a sacred monster" in his play about Sarah Bernhardt.

According to the journalist W. J. Weatherby, Monroe herself confessed that she was a monster during the filming of her last finished movie The Misfits (1961). She was living in hell, and she made life hell for others. Arthur Miller witnessed his wife transported by chemicals into another dimension. He saw her becoming the victim of the fantasy she had created. "The self-destruction was terrifying". A shattering chapter is devoted to an interview made by Wilson for his book with the script supervisor of The Misfits, Angela Allen, a film industry stalwart and John Huston regular. This is truly "the dark side of Marilyn", dismantling suspicions of hagiography.

The contradictions in the Marilyn Monroe image are extreme, and Richard Dyer sees in them the very key to the mystery of her stardom. 

"The love goddess of the nuclear age" (Clare Boothe Luce) survives today as an avatar for the Me Too age. The battle for mental health strikes a chord in an age of anxiety. Monroe was a key figure in the society of the spectacle, now more formidable than ever.

Marilyn Monroe was a master of illusion, and highly self-aware, as proven by a favourite quote of hers, from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

"True love is visible not to the eyes but to the heart, for eyes may be deceived. What is essential is invisible to the eye."

"Adieu, dit le renard. Voici mon secret. Il est très simple: on ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur. L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux."

SIMON & SCHUSTER PUBLICITY BLURB:

"Dreamer. Bombshell. Icon. 

Featuring a wealth of unpublished material, Andrew Wilson’s biography of Marilyn Monroe presents the actress in a startling new light. 

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she had an uncertain and unforgiving upbringing. She grew up in Los Angeles and would dream about Hollywood, believing that acting would be her one-way ticket to happiness. Her dream was so powerful that she transformed herself into the ultimate goddess of the silver screen, and her image has been branded into the collective consciousness. Men lusted after her, and women wanted to be her. All her life, she just wanted to be loved. 

Told through 100 captivating snapshots, we are thrown into the glamorous but dangerous world of old Hollywood. We see a young Marilyn navigating the highs and lows of the studio system as she attempts to free herself from the constraints of Twentieth Century-Fox. We also go behind the scenes of her marriages to teenage sweetheart Jim Dougherty, baseball star Joe DiMaggio and famous playwright Arthur Miller. We hear the voices of friends, lovers – and enemies. 

We hear of the friendships she formed with poets, philosophers, playwrights and political activists, and the years spent training with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio.

In the concluding chapters, Andrew Wilson unpicks what happened on the night Marilyn died after a suspected drug overdose. Were the Kennedys involved, or was she just let down by those closest to her? 

I Wanna Be Loved By You is a revealing and nuanced portrait of the life, death and afterlife of an icon who still fascinates us today." 

* Both her mother and father were alive but not present in their daughter's life.

Lee Miller (exhibition 2026) Le Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris

 

Sous la direction de Hilary Floe assistée de Saskia Flower: Lee Miller. Catalogue d'exposition. Hard cover. EAN 9782759606313. 1,5 kg. ISBN 2759606317. 260 pages. 23,8 x 29,1 x 3 cm. This edition in French only. Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris / Paris-Musées 2026. Cover art: Lee Miller: Model with Lightbulb (vers 1943). Vogue studio, London. © Lee Miller Archives England 2026. All Rights Reserved. 

Lee Miller

Le Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris

    11 Avenue du Président Wilson 75116 Paris, M° Iéna Ligne 9

"Based on the initiative of Tate Britain and in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition brings together almost 250 old and new prints, several which are on display for the first time, and proposes a new view on the œuvre of Lee Miller."

From 10 April through 2 August 2026.

Tuesday to Sunday at 10-18, Thursday until 21.30.

    Visited 10 April 2026

At the Art Institute of Chicago, the exhibition is on display from 29 August through 7 December 2026.

OFFICIAL: "A key figure of the international avant-garde, Lee Miller (Elizabeth Miller, Lady Penrose, 1907 Poughkeepsie, USA – 1977 Chiddingly, UK), was by turns a model, a Surrealist artist, portraitist, fashion photographer and war correspondent accredited by the US Army. Long relegated to the role of muse, she is now recognized as one of the great photographers of the 20th century."

"The exhibition traces her entire career, from her New York beginnings to her war years in Europe, including her time in Egypt and her life in London. It demonstrates the richness of a body of work where formal experimentation, visual audacity, and political engagement coexist."

"Eighteen years after the last French retrospective at the Jeu de Paume, the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris offers a journey in six parts, combining a chronological and thematic approach."

I  Face à l'objectif / Before the Camera

II  Rêves d'Eros / Dreaming of Eros

III  Un regard surréel / A Surreal Gaze

IV  Nouvelles visions / New Visions

V  Artistes et amis I / Artists and Friends I

VI  Sombre Gloire / Grim Glory

VII  Voici Vogue, malgré tout ! / Here Is Vogue, In Spite of All

VIII  Sur le front / In the Field

IX  C'est pourtant vrai ! / Believe It

X  Séquelles / Aftermath

XI  Artistes et amis II / Artists and Friends II

XII  Salle de projection / Screening Room

XIII  Espace découverte / Interpretation Room   

AA: This is my first Lee Miller exhibition. We are among the first in line when it opens for the public at the Palais de Tokyo, near the Palais de Chaillot at the Place du Trocadéro, by the river Seine, facing the Eiffel Tower.

The spell is cast at once with Le Sang d'un poète (1930) by Jean Cocteau. The armless statue (Lee Miller) at the room of the poet (Enrique Rivero) invites him to jump into the mirror to discover another world.

As a photographer's model, Lee Miller works with luminaries such as Arnold Genthe, Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton and George Hoyningen-Huene. Man Ray brings her into the heart of Surrealism, and she becomes a professional photographer herself, also in the inspiration of "rayogrammes" and solarisation.

The Dreams of Eros space displays naked frankness without dispelling the mystery of sex. This is a mutual journey between Man Ray and Lee Miller, even delving into the BDSM arena. A poet is born. A surreal, sensual and playful inspiration remains when Miller establishes her own commercial studio in New York City. Julien Levy organizes the only Miller monograph exhibition of her lifetime. 

During her marriage with the Egyptian businessman Aziz Eloui Bey she launches a visionary cycle about Egypt and the Middle East, on display in the Nouvelles visions sequence. She covers fashion for Vogue. 

Above all she excels in portraits. She photographs fellow Surrealists including Leonora Carrington, Joseph Cornell and René Magritte. She records the African-American cast of the opera Four Saints in Three Acts. Charles Chaplin is delighted when Lee Miller gives him the Surrealist treatment. Jean Cocteau and Pablo Picasso are among Miller's models across decades. A favourite of mine is a photo of Picasso with Lee Miller's son Antony Penrose at Vallauris in 1954.

During the Second World War, Miller becomes a photojournalist and a war correspondent for Vogue, dedicated to document historical evidence. To this key stage of her life, four sequences are dedicated. Grim Glory covers the Battle of Britain / the Blitz. 

In the sequence called In the Front we witness the liberation of France following D-Day, the Battle of Saint-Malo and field hospitals in Normandy. Teaming up with David E. Scherman (who works for Life magazine), she photographs the liberation of Paris, the Battle of Alsace and the liberation of the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau.

The horror chamber of the exhibition is called C'est pourtant vrai ! Visiting the concentration camps for the first time, Miller cannot believe her eyes. She had embarked on her journey to witness and document evidence but did not begin to guess the magnitude of the crime of the century, not yet known by the words the Holocaust or the Shoah.

In the Aftermath sequence we see Miller documenting the devastation across Europe: Leipzig, Frankfurt, Berchtesgaden, Budapest, Cologne, Vienna... In Munich, Lee Miller and David E. Scherman occupy Adolf Hitler's apartment and photograph each other in the bathtub of the Führer. Besides the most legendary images, the full run of the contact sheet is on display.

The appreciation of Lee Miller the artist keeps rising. During her lifetime she was seldom exhibited, but Edward Steichen included her in the path-breaking The Family of Man exhibition at MoMA (1955), which brought the art of photography to a new level of respect.

Recent tributes to Miller in the cinema include Lee (Ellen Kuras, GB/US 2023) starring Kate Winslet as Lee Miller, and Civil War (Alex Garland, GB/US 2024) where both female war correspondents, Lee Smith (Kirsten Dunst) and Jessie Cullen (Cailee Spaeny) look up to Lee Miller as a role model.

The art and craft of the display is of the highest level. We live currently in the age of the domination of the Instagram. Art museums surrender to the supremacy of Silicon Valley IT behemoths. It is no longer possible to focus and concentrate on art anymore. Bright screens of the mobile devices command attention. Admittedly, this visit is not of the worst kind.

And fortunately, the catalogue is so excellent that it gives me the true Lee Miller experience.

OFFICIAL INTRODUCTION:

Du 10 avril au 2 août 2026, le Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris présente la plus importante rétrospective consacrée à Lee Miller en France depuis vingt ans.

Organisée à l’initiative de la Tate Britain et en collaboration avec l’Art Institute of Chicago, l’exposition réunit près de 250 tirages anciens et modernes, dont plusieurs inédits, et propose un nouveau regard sur l’œuvre de Lee Miller.

Figure essentielle de l’avant-garde internationale, Lee Miller (1907, Poughkeepsie, États-Unis – 1977, Chiddingly, Royaume-Uni) fut tour à tour mannequin, artiste surréaliste, portraitiste, photographe de mode et correspondante de guerre accréditée par l’armée américaine. Longtemps reléguée au rôle d’égérie, elle est aujourd’hui reconnue comme l’une des grandes photographes du XXème siècle.

L’exposition retrace l’ensemble de son parcours, de ses débuts à New York aux années de guerre en Europe, en passant par son séjour en Égypte et sa vie à Londres. Elle démontre la richesse d’une œuvre où cohabitent expérimentations formelles, audace visuelle et engagement politique.

Dix-huit ans après la dernière rétrospective française au Jeu de Paume, le Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris propose un parcours en six parties, mêlant approche chronologique et thématique. 

L’exposition

L’exposition s’ouvre sur un ensemble de portraits de Lee Miller réalisés par les plus grands photographes et cinéastes des années 1920 et 1930. Lee Miller s’impose comme une personnalité du New York de la fin des années 1920 à travers tout d’abord son activité de mannequin. Elle est l’un des modèles les plus recherchés par les magazines, figurant l’archétype de la femme moderne, émancipée et active. Lors de son séjour à Paris, ses liens avec les surréalistes la conduisent à jouer l’un des rôles principaux du premier film de Jean Cocteau, Le Sang d’un poète (1930-1932).

Le parcours se poursuit en examinant l’importance de son séjour parisien entre 1929 et 1932. Cette période est marquée par sa rencontre avec Man Ray, dont elle devient l’apprentie mais également la compagne. Leur intense collaboration explore la puissance érotique du médium photographique, et se matérialise notamment dans leur découverte conjointe de ce que Lee Miller appelait la « solarisation ». Également connue sous le nom d'effet Sabatier, la solarisation est une technique consistant à réexposer brièvement un tirage ou un négatif à la lumière pendant le traitement. Il en résulte une inversion partielle des tons de la photographie, créant un effet de halo onirique. Ce phénomène a été observé pour la première fois dans les années 1840, mais Man Ray et Lee Miller sont souvent considérés comme les premiers artistes à l'avoir utilisé de manière créative.

Lee Miller ouvre son propre studio et travaille comme photographe pour Vogue, affirmant ainsi son désir d’indépendance artistique. Ses photographies, singulières par leur goût pour les cadrages obliques et les rapprochements insolites, sont exposées dans les galeries parisiennes aux côtés des grands photographes de l'époque (Germaine Krull, Brassaï...).

Cette période très riche s’achève par son départ pour New York en 1932, où elle ouvre un nouveau studio. Sa première exposition personnelle est alors organisée par la galerie Julien Levy. Il n’y en aura pas d’autres de son vivant. Son activité de portraitiste, à laquelle deux sections sont dédiées, prend un véritable essor, et se poursuivra tout au long de sa vie. Elle reflète ses nombreux liens avec les milieux artistiques et littéraires.

En 1934, Lee Miller épouse l’homme d’affaire égyptien Aziz Eloui Bey et s’installe avec lui au Caire. Les photographies de cette période frappent par l’affirmation des motifs, des textures et des cadrages qui composent ses images. Loin de l’exploration de thèmes exotiques, Miller va davantage porter son attention vers les contrastes de matières et de formes, les changements de perceptions induits par les angles de prises de vues.

En 1937, la rencontre de Miller avec le peintre et poète surréaliste Roland Penrose l’éloigne progressivement de l’Égypte. Elle passe davantage de temps en Europe en compagnie de ses amis surréalistes. En 1939, au déclenchement de la guerre, elle choisit de rester à Londres et s’investit progressivement dans les publications du Vogue britannique en tant que photographe de mode. Cette section montre l’utilisation dans ses clichés des ruines et des bombardements de Londres. Elle participe par ailleurs à la publication en mai 1941 de l’ouvrage Grim Glory : Pictures of Britain Under Fire (Gloire lugubre, images de la Grande-Bretagne sous le feu), qui témoigne de la vie quotidienne pendant le Blitz en mêlant célébration patriotique et humour noir.

À l’hiver 1942, Miller est l’une des rares femmes photographes à obtenir une accréditation de correspondante de guerre par les États-Unis. Désormais, elle couvre directement le conflit et consacre de nombreux reportages aux femmes engagées dans la guerre : infirmières, membres de la défense anti-aérienne, aviatrices, qui paraissent aussi bien dans le Vogue britannique qu’américain.

Quelques semaines après le Débarquement de juin 1944, elle traverse la Manche pour suivre l’avancée des troupes alliées, et se trouve en première ligne sur le front, notamment lors de la libération de Saint-Malo. Ses photographies et ses articles dénoncent la violence du conflit. Le parcours montre la façon dont elle se distingue alors des reportages de guerre classiques, par le ton qu’elle emploie et son engagement très personnel. Son œil et sa sensibilité s’attachent davantage à des détails signifiants, qu’au théâtre des opérations militaires.

En avril 1945, aux côtés du photographe de Life David E. Scherman, Lee Miller se rend à Dachau et Buchenwald juste après la libération des camps. Accompagnés d’un article (Believe it – juin 1945), certains de ses clichés publiés dans Vogue font état de sa sidération. Les photographies de Lee Miller sont parmi les premières à révéler au grand public l’entreprise d’extermination de masse des nazis.

Le 30 avril 1945, juste après avoir photographié le camp de Dachau, Lee Miller se rend à Munich et entre dans l’appartement d’Adolf Hitler. Dans une photographie entièrement mise en scène et chargée de symboles, elle pose dans la baignoire du dictateur. Peu diffusée sur le moment, l’image est aujourd’hui considérée comme l’une des photographies les plus emblématiques de la fin du conflit mondial. Jusqu’en janvier 1946, Lee Miller photographie l’Europe et la Libération. Ces images reflètent la douleur et les privations mais également les laissés-pour-compte de la Libération, comme les femmes et les enfants. Miller confie ainsi à son éditrice : « Je préfère décrire les dégâts des villes détruites et des personnes blessées plutôt que de faire face au moral brisé et à la foi anéantie de ceux qui pensaient que “les choses allaient redevenir comme avant” ».

Les années qui suivent, Miller peine à se relever de son expérience de la guerre. La dernière section de l’exposition est consacrée à son installation à Farley Farm House (Sussex) avec Roland Penrose et leur fils Antony. Lee Miller poursuit tout d’abord ses reportages et photographies de mode pour Vogue, mais cesse peu à peu son travail commercial. Dans un cadre plus privé, elle continue à réaliser des portraits de ses proches, qui reflètent son engagement continu auprès de l'avant-garde internationale. Farley’s House, reflet du couple Miller-Penrose, devient un lieu important de rencontres artistiques au cours desquelles Lee Miller s’adonne à de nombreuses expérimentations culinaires, qui rendent souvent hommage à l’inventivité de ses amis.

Le catalogue

Le catalogue d’exposition édité par la Tate Britain à l’occasion de l’exposition est repris, traduit et adapté par les éditions Paris Musées. Il est pensé comme un nouvel ouvrage de référence sur l’œuvre de l’artiste. Il rassemble trois essais prolongeant les thématiques abordées dans l’exposition, rédigés par Damarice Amao, attachée de conservation au cabinet photo du musée national d’Art moderne, Hilary Floe, conservatrice en chef à la Tate Britain et commissaire de l’exposition Lee Miller et Fanny Schulmann, conservatrice en chef au Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris et co-commissaire de l’exposition Lee Miller. Il accueille également un texte de l’autrice britannique Deborah Levy.

L’exposition Lee Miller est organisée par le Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris du 10 avril au 2 août 2026, en collaboration avec la Tate Britain et l’Art Institute of Chicago.

L’exposition à la Tate Britain se tient du 2 octobre 2025 au 15 février 2026 et l’exposition à l’Art Institute of Chicago aura lieu du 29 août au 7 décembre 2026.

Avec la participation des Archives Lee Miller.

Avec le soutien de Sfil