Neiti Aika / Lady Time

Elina Talvensaari: Neiti Aika / Lady Time.

National Competition 7
Tampere International Film Festival (TFF)
Plevna 5, Tampere, 6 March 2020.
    In the presence of Elina Talvensaari.

NEITI AIKA
LADY TIME

Elina Talvensaari | Finland 2019 | Documentary | 61 min

TFF: "Lady Time is a documentary film in which filmmaker Elina Talvensaari gets to know the previous occupant of her new home. She was an old woman who died alone with no one left to remember her. Everything she owned remained in the apartment and passed on to Elina. What would happen if Elina was to throw everything away? Fear of oblivion drove Elina to find out who the woman was."

"Neiti Aika on dokumenttielokuva, jossa elokuvantekijä Elina Talvensaari tutustuu uuden kotinsa edelliseen asukkaaseen. Tämä oli vanha nainen, joka kuoli yksin ilman ketään, joka muistaisi häntä. Koko omaisuus jäi asuntoon ja sitä kautta Elinalle. Mitä tapahtuisi, jos Elina heittäisi kaiken menemään? Unohduksen pelko sai Elinan selvittämään, kuka nainen oli."

AA: Time is a most profoundly cinematic theme, and in her film Elina Talvensaari conducts a unique "search of lost time". This is a documentary journey with creative inserts such as a funeral which nobody attends, illustrating the film-maker's imagination of a woman who died forgotten.

Following a trail of photographs, official documents, objects, family archives and even home movies Talvensaari reconstructs an entire life full of drama and tragedy but also love, happiness and friendship. One person's life story (her name is Sirkka-Liisa Miettinen, née Dyberg, 1915-2012) opens a unique window to the saga of the nation of Finland over a time period of almost a century. We witness key events such as the wars of 1939-1945 and the 1952 Helsinki Olympics through the family lens.

Talvensaari gets so immersed into the legacy of an unknown woman that Sirkka-Liisa becomes almost a lost ancestor or relative to her own family.

Deeply cinematic is also the sense of "imprinted time" in the objects, and there is a touch of Tarkovsky in the way they are viewed. They are not rubbish to be disposed of with a Marie Kondo approach. Talvensaari even takes Sirkka-Liisas belongings with her when the family moves from the home to which Sirkka-Liisa and Veikko had moved after the 1952 Olympics, the house having originally been built for the Olympic village.

Another Tarkovsky connection is "Ich ruf zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ!" BWV 639 the funeral organ standard, also heard as a main theme of Solaris. Friends had attended Sirkka-Liisa's funeral, and she did not die alone, as Talvensaari finally learns. Among the couple's remains we find a love letter from the beloved hubby Veikko in which he hopes that "one day pictures could tell how wonderful our life had been".