Kuuden päivän juoksu / Six Day Run

Photo: Kiasma.

 FI 2013. A single channel projected installation. Screening format: DCP, blu-ray, or digital file - original format: Super 8 mm film - 1:2,35 - colour - 5.1. - dialogue in English - 14'25"
    D: Mika Taanila. DP: Jussi Eerola. S design: Olli Huhtanen. M: Circle. P: Kinotar / Cilla Werning, Lasse Saarinen.
    Screened at Kiasma's Mika Taanila: Time Machines exhibition, 16 Nov 2013

"New York's Six Day Race is an extreme endurance sports event. The competitors run laps around a one-mile loop in a park, striving to cope with as little sleep as possible. The film's main protagonist is the Helsinki-based ultra-marathon runner Ashprinhanal Pekka Aalto."

"Dating from the 1870s, the race originally focused on betting, but today it is more about spiritual self-transcendence and meditation. Like many of his fellow contestants, Ashprihanal is a devotee of the Bengali spiritual Master Sri Chinmoy." (Kiasma exhibition presentation).

A documentary vision on transcending one's limits, on the zone between the physical and the spiritual, on the triumph of the spirit over matter.