16mm to digital, colour, silent
3’20
2020
A single window frame; a portal. As the circular nature of time begins to reveal itself, a new decade begins.
ARIES is an exploration of the stillness in time through a single roll of film. This film and I, the filmmaker share an experience of staying still for a month during the first lockdown in Spring 2020. One inside of a 16mm camera, where the shutter opens once a day, the other inside of an apartment in Montréal, observing the daily changes in the environment and its people.
Elian Mikkola is a Finnish Moving Image Artist (of Karelian descent), and a white settler currently based between Treaty 4, Regina, and Montréal (Tiohtià:ke), Canada. Originally from Turku, Finland, Mikkola holds a BA in Journalism from Tampere University. They completed their MFA in Media Production in 2019 at the University of Regina.
Mikkola works closely with both analog and digital images and their extensions. Their work explores themes such as memory, spatial dependences and queer belonging. Mikkola’s work has been showcased in several film festivals in Canada and internationally. Their latest two films premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam 2020 and Hong Kong International Film Festival in 2021.
Mikkola is a part of La Lumière Collective based in Montréal and a current board member of the Queer City Cinema.
Website: elianmikkola.com
Online portfolio: elianmikkola.myportfolio.com/work