In 2006, Hansu Siirala suffered two major strokes that left one half of her body immobile. She now lives in an assisted living home in Vancouver, Canada. Combining a phone conversation with abstract and animated visuals, Hansu Solo is an intimate portrait about how she spends her days and thinks about the passing of time.
This film brings together our interest in small details and the big questions we all think about. Drawing on Emily’s experience in traditional animation and Kaija’s background in editing and sound design we crafted a visual response to a recorded phone conversation between Kaija and her aunt, Hansu. Playing off the rhythms of Hansu’s cadences, the resulting imagery oscillates between the minutiae of the real and the abstract. This portrait reveals her humor, reflective intelligence and contagious curiosity for life.
Directors: Emily Collins and Kaija Siirala. 2015, 8min., HD color, Canada/USA. Animation Documentary. In English with Japanese subtitles.
Screening Date/Time
Tokyo: Sun, July 29, 12:30~ (International Shorts)
Okayama: Friday, August 3, 14:00~ / Sunday, August 5, 19:00~ (International Shorts)
Creator Bios:
Kaija Siirala
Kaija works in documentary media as a picture editor, sound designer and educator. Most recently, a piece she edited, We Became Fragments, was published as a New York Times’ Op-Doc. Kaija has worked as a sound editor on films that have screened at the National Gallery of Canada, True/False Film Festival and AFI fest. In 2015, her documentary short created with collaborator Emily Collins, Hansu Solo, was awarded a student grant from the National Board of Review. A keen collaborator, Kaija has explored live video mixing in a number of performance contexts including dance, theatre, and music. In 2015, she travelled to the Faroe Islands as part of the fluid states: performance of unknowing conference. She has been teaching as adjunct faculty at Hunter College and Pratt Institute the past three years and was a member-in-residence of the Meerkat Media Collective from 2016-2018. In May 2018, she completed her MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College (CUNY) and is now freshly based in Hamilton, ON.
Links
KAIJA SIIRALA
Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/kprsii
Emily Collins
Emily is a partner and Creative Director at Mighty Oak, all women animation studio in Brooklyn, NY, where she leads story development, fabrication, animation and post on various projects. Her passions include stop-motion animation, drawing, fabrication and non-fiction storytelling. Her client collaborations include work with: the NYTimes; Nick Jr.; Netflix; and HBO. Her work has been seen at festivals such as DOC NYC and Sundance, among others. She graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 with a degree in Film/Animation/Video and is currently pursuing an MFA in Integrated Media Arts at Hunter College.