04 Once Upon a Time... - Finland

Entering Institute: Kuvataideakatemia - Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki
Contact / Supervising teacher: Eija-Liisa Ahtila
Author/s: Heidi Saramäki
Length: 1 min.

The player will show in this paragraph

Once upon a time... is a one-minute animated visual poem. In the animation language appears as a part of the storytelling tradition. The meaning of language as a tool of communication and sharing is emphasised. Diversity is seen as a vivid network of myths, stories and tales from different cultures. Through metamorphosis and metaphors one builds up an absurd, associative cascade.
In the beginning there is soft darkness. From the darkness soars a clumsy bird. A bird lays a hairy egg. The egg cracks and turns into wavy sea. The sea becomes (?) a rippling floating continent. The continent wants to be called Europe. Europe stretches, reaches towards different distant directions. The direction turns to diminishing lump. The lump shrinks to a tiny ball. The ball almost disappears as a vulnerable dot.
Stories, tales and fiction happen everywhere. They tend to move along the spoken tradition: sites and persons change, episodes of the story expand, fall off, become simplified or meander according to the verbal talent of the storyteller. The animation is about the memory, nature, structure and repeating form of the story. The same stories have been told in various cultures in different languages. Stories affect, open and close. Transient moments happen, are forgotten and come back transformed.